Effect of growth stage based water stress on yield and water use efficiency of tomato at tselemty district, Tigray, Ethiopia

Abstract

Water availability is a strong challenge especially under water resource scarce areas. In water-scarce regions as is of Ethiopia, optimum yield and enhanced water use efficiency of crops can be obtained if best irrigation water management stategey is adopted .  The deficit irrigation practices become the main adopting policies for water saving. A two year field experiment  carried out at Maitebri Agricultural Research Center, Maitsebri experimental farm during 2020 and 2021 off seasons to find out the effect of growth stage based water stress on yield, yield parameters and water use efficiency of Tomato. Randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications used in the field trial. Three irrigation levels (100%, 50%, and 25% crop evapotranspiration) and FAO based four growth stages of tomato (initial,developmental, mid and late seasons) was considered as treatments. Data on marketable yield, other yield parameters  and crop water use efficiency (WUE) were recorded. Results showed us, reducing the full crop water requirement  up to 75% at development growth stage can severely reduce the marketable yield up to 66.5%. On the other hand, the highest in water use efficiency (9.2kgm^-3) was obtained with reducing the full crop water requirement by 75% at the end growth stage of tomato. The lowest in water use efficiency (3.5kgm^-3) was obtained from treatments that were irrigating 75% below the full crop-evapotranspiration at development growth stage. Generally, reducing irrigation water below 75%ETc during development growth stage of tomato can significantly influence the marketable, water use efficiency and yield parameters. Therefore, tomato crop is very sensitive to water stress beyond 50% of the full crop evapotranspiration (ETc) at its developmental growth stage.