The effects of climatic change mediated water stress on growth and yield of tomato

Abstract

Climate change especially water stress affects crop productivity in many regions of the world. The current paper assesses the impact of water stress on growth and fruit yield of tomato. Winter cultivar (BARI Tomato-14) was grown under different levels of moisture stress (control, 75, and 50% evapotranspiration moisture) in pot experiment using a randomized complete block design with three replications. The experiment results showed that increased moisture stress progressively reduced plant height (92.73, 90.06, and 75.58 cm), leaf area (198.69, 187.56, and 176.66 cm2), chlorophyll content (47.41, 40.87 and 38.10 mg/g), leaf dry matter (18.07, 16.27, and 12.24%), number of branches (13.55, 12.06 and 10.00) and leaf number (22.93, 22.44, and 20.34) under control 100, 75, and 50% of evapotranspiration conditions, respectively. The result also showed a significant and positive correlation between fruit yield and growth and physiological parameters. The highest correlation was observed between fruit yield and leaf number (r2 = 0.97) followed by chlorophyll content (r2 = 0.95). Consequently, leaf number and chlorophyll content is a suitable index for assessment of water stress and tomato genotypes tolerant.