Effects of new soilless growing media and Arbuscular Mycorrhiza on the growth performance of lowland cherry tomato (Solanum lycorpersicon var. Cerasiforme)

Cherry tomato (Solanum lycopersicum var. Cerasiforme) is an important horticultural crop grown commercially worldwide and available all-year-round. In Malaysia, the demand for healthy and safety tomatoes has increased both, export and domestic markets. However, insufficient supplies of tomato due to intensive demand from both markets entail more tomato cultivation. Currently, tomatoes are widely cultivated using the fertigation systems where coco peat (CP) is extensively used as the growing medium. This may due to the facts that it is cheaper, readily available and hold large quantities of water. However, CP contains less mineral nutrients. Thus, new alternatives should be discovered to replace or enhance the performance of CP by combining it with other agricultural wastes that abundantly available such as Oil Palm Fruit Bunches (OP) and rice husk biochar (B). Ain Najwa et al. (2014) reported that the combination of CP and OP resulted in higher yield of cherry tomatoes as compared to CP alone. In addition, combination of CP and B also showed a similar trend in the production of cherry tomato (Ain Najwa et al., 2014). Thus, B and OP could be a good medium in keeping nutrient readily available that helps the plant to absorb the nutrients. Among the significance of using CP and OP as the growing media, it is believed can maximize the utilisation of waste products. It is well documented that CP and OP are categorized as the waste products of the agriculture industry. Hence, by utilising these products, agricultural waste can be reduced as well as its pollution. In fact, the application of Arbuscular Mycorrhiza (AM) is believed to increase the growth performance of the plant due to its symbiosis characteristics with the plants root. It is renowned that AM plays a key role in enhancing growth performance of various crops. Thus, combining AM with the newly developed growing media such as CP, OP, and B could be the best alternatives to increase the growth, yield and quality of cherry tomato. Therefore, this study aimed at evaluating the effects of new soilless growing media and AM either alone or combination on the growth performance of lowland cherry tomato. (Copied from article)