A preliminary study on the effects of gliricidia leaf extract on growth performances of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum)

Abstract

The suitability of gliricidia (Gliricidia sepium) leaf extract to replace
100%, 75 %, 50 % and 25 % of Albert solution in growth of tomato (var. Thilina) was tested. The research was conducted under the protected plant house conditions at Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna. Polybags filled with the medium of 1:1 coir dust and sand and the solutions prepared by mixing different composition of gliricidia leaf extract and Albert solution were used for the experiment. 100 g ground gliricidia leaves were mixed in 1 L of water and filtered to prepare nutrient solutions. Growth performances of plants were recorded 12 weeks post treatments. Significantly (P<0.05) lower plant height was observed in plants treated only with gliricidia leaf extract whereas, significantly higher leaf number was observed in plants treated only with Albert solution (control). Performance of plant growth in respect to time taken for flowering also showed significant differences among treatments where, plants in control took shortest time but the time gap was only 6 days. Plants treated with 25% gliricidia extract and 75% Albert solution showed significantly higher yield. According to these results it could be concluded that the growth performances of tomato are reduced with increasing level of gliricidia leaf extract but with considering the yield gliricidia leaf extract could replace about 25% of Albert solution giving an additional benefits to reduce cost of production.