This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of apical dominance and fertilizer application on the yield and quality of Pectomech, a variant of tomato

Undoubtedly Ghanaians consume high amounts of tomatoes, thus the need to find sustainable ways of cultivating this vegetable to meet these high demands. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of apical dominance and fertilizer application on the yield and quality of Pectomech, a variant of tomato. A field experiment was conducted in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Biology Experimental Gardens (KNUST). The experiment was carried out with a completely randomized block design with three replications for each of the four treatments. Only one variant of tomato was subjected fertilizer application, apical dominance, a combination of the two and a control. From results obtained from inducing apical dominance by pruning; the tomato plant doesn’t show strong apical dominance, thus shows more branching and bushy growth. The main aim of pruning is to maximize fruit yield. Also, careful pruning balances shoot growth and fruit production. The mean heights taken from all replications of each treatments was the major source of data used in this study. The average initial heights for both treated and control plants after 28 days of transplanting ranged from 43.6cm to 45.3cm. The mean heights for control tomato plants remained fairly stable (46.6cm) even at the third week of data collection. Tomato plants subjected to fertilizer application only attained a mean height of 48.3cm during this same time period. The difference in height between apical dominance plants (51.3cm) and apical dominance plus fertilizer application plants (51cm) during the third week was not appreciable with a narrow margin of 0.3cm favoring plants subjected to apical dominance only. Generally, plants treated with only fertilizer yielded but not as compared to plants subjected to both apical dominance plus fertilizer application. Furthermore, plants treated with only apical dominance equally gave good yields