Importance of Compost Fertilization and Spraying With Moringa Leaf Extract on Yield and Quality of Cherry Tomato Under Organic Soilless System

Abstract

Soilless agriculture is one of the most promising systems because its advantages like saving irrigation water, benefiting from unsuitable land for agriculture or agriculture of building roofs for production of food as well as decreasing pesticide application or mineral fertilizers. Organic fertilization contributes also in decreasing hazardous side effects of using chemical fertilizers. The aiming of this investigation was to study of using organic fertilization system by adding compost as a source of fertilizer, irrigate the plants with fish extract at rate of 1:100 and spraying the plants with moringa leaf extract and the influence of that on cherry tomato plant growth, fruit yield and its quality. The results of the present investigation showed that compost application in vermiculite improved yield and quality of cherry tomato fruits (Guindo F1), especially at 400 and 500 g/plant levels, which increased plant length, number of leaves and leaf area/plant, total fruit yield, average fruit weight, fruit diameter, vitamin C, TSS, N, P and K percentages. While decreased the stem thickness, and titratable acidity percentage in tomato fruits. Foliar application with moringa leaf extract exhibited a positive influence on the previous studied parameters. The interactions between organic fertilization and moringa leaf extracthighly increased these parameters. The highest total fruit yield was obtained from 400 g compost/plant as well as fertigation with fish extract and sprayed with moringa leaf extract, it gave 5.436 and 5.054 fruits kg/plant compared to the control treatment (chemical fertilization, without moringa leaf extract spray) which obtained 3.765 and 4.201 kg/plant for the first and the second season, respectively.