Tomato

Intercultural Operations

Irrigation Weed Control Staking Pruning

Irrigation

Tomatoes need very careful irrigation that is just sufficient water at the right time.
It has been observed that the water-table of an area plays an important part in meeting the moisture needs of this crop.
It is necessary to maintain an even moisture supply.
Over watering is as harmful as insufficient irrigation. Young plants should be watered only when they apparently need it.
Therefore, staked crops will need water every five to seven days and ground crops every ten days.
A period of drought followed by sudden heavy watering during the fruiting period may cause cracking of fruits.
During summer season, irrigation at every 3 to 4 days interval is necessary, whereas in winter 10 to 15 days interval is sufficient.

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Weed Control

Tomato plants require frequent shallow cultivation, especially during their first four weeks in the field. The surface soil is loosened by hand hoeing as soon as it is dry enough after every irrigation or shower. All weeds should also be removed in this process.
Mulching with straw, black polythene and many other materials has been found beneficial in moisture conservation, in controlling weeds and some diseases and in bettering the quality and yield.

Weedicides used in tomato

Stages of Application	Weedicide	Dose	Remarks
i) Pre plant soil incorporation (Trans planted crop)	Diphenamid Pebulate Nitralin / trifluralin	4-6 kg/ha 0.75-1.0 kg/ha 0.75-1.0 kg/ha	Determine safe interval between transplanting tomato and herbicide application for each situation. Usually 4-6 weeks interval is considered appropriate
ii) Preplant surface application	Alachlor Fluchloralin Metribuzin Nitrofen Oxadiazon	1.0-1.25 kg/ha 1.25 kg/ha 0.35 kg/ha 1.0 kg/ha 1.0 kg/ha	---
iii) Pre emergence (in direct seeded crop)	Alachlor Metribuzin Bensulide Diphenamid	1-2 kg/ha 0.2-0.35 kg/ha 4-6 kg/ha 4-6 kg/ha	Can be attempted also in tomato Should not be used in glass houses - Do not use on high pH soils. Also do not tank- mix fertilisers with it.
iv) Post- transplant	Metribuzin Flauzi-fop Bethoxydin	0.35-0.5 kg/ha 0.12-0.56 kg/ha 0.22-0.45 kg/ha	Apply only after the transplants are well established. Use only in the event perennial grasses pose problem Useful against annual grasses
v) Post emergence	Metribuzin	0.28-0.5 kg/ha	Apply when the crop is in 4-6 leaf stage

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Staking

Staking plants has proved to be beneficial in the cultivation of tomato.
In case of indeterminate varieties the yield and quality have improved and more so in rainy and winter seasons where the incidence of some of the diseases of fruit and foliage is also reduced.
It was observed that staked plants gave significantly more yield/plant than the unstaked, unpruned plants.
Staking will prevent the fruits coming in contact with wet soil thereby rotting of fruit is prevented.
In the normal system of planting, the seedlings are planted on the sides of the ridges and if left unstaked the fruits will rot by coming in contact with the wet soil.

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Pruning

Pruning and training of tomato plants are practiced in American and European countries, but it has not become popular in our country except in some F1 hybrids, because of non-consistent results at various places and the cost involved therein.
Some of the growth-regulating chemicals have shown useful results on experimental basis but commercial utilization needs to be exploited.
Spray of gibberellic acid (50 ppm) at the fruit-setting stage increased the ascorbic acid content.

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Telangana

Tomato

About Tomato

History
Morphology

Tomato Management

Services Overview

The key services offered by Ikisan are:

System study, design and development of IT enabled solutions and services for the agri sector.

Execution of rural IT enabled projects on BOT/BOOT/Turnkey basis.

Development, Customization and Deployment of Ikisan's IPR protected software applications.

Providing support services and best management practices for augmenting the marketing development efforts of the groups agricultural input companies (NFCL and NACL).

Development and Dissemination of best practice and information though a unique multi lingual knowledge website for the agri sector.

Some of the key customers/partners that benefit significantly from our work include are Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, State Agricultural Marketing Boards, Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Tamil Nadu, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Motorola Mobility (GOOGLE) etc.

As highlighted earlier Ikisan provides significant support to the market development and marketing efforts of NFCL and NACL by providing best practices and information across the agricultural input value chain - weather, soil, seeds, fertilizers, water, pesticides, output prices etc. that have enabled the companies to develop deep customer relationships and in turn enable them to grow above market growth rates. Recently example in fertilizers includes the development of Customized Fertilizer Grades (for NFCL across India that are crop and location specific have not only reduced the current consumption of fertilizers of farmers but have significantly enhanced crop yields and farmer incomes) that are expected to add significant revenues to the company.

Currently, agriculture value chain is driven by technical expertise. However, there is a lack of adequate Management knowledge and skills amongst the professionals. Therefore, Ikisan and XLRI, Jamshedpur have jointly developed an Agri Business Management Program for Agri-professionals and students. Ikisan provides the domain expertise while XLRI provides pedagogy. This program is a combination of virtual learning and campus based module at XLRI, Jamshedpur. This program has been highly appreciated.

Intellectual Property Rights for many software applications such as Field Manager, Vyapar, Mandi, Quick Solutions Systems, Management Time Table, Agri Information System and Agrecommerz belong to Ikisan. A significant recent development in this area is the introduction of Weather Based Crop Insurance. This entails setting up of Automatic Weather Stations, which provide dynamic village-level data essential for settlement of weather based insurance claims.