Status of tomato Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.cultivation and pesticide use in Golapar area of Uttarakhand, India

Abstract

Tomato is one of the most widely grown temperate vegetable crops grown in Himalayas and Tarai region of Northern India. Being the high value crop is important in raising the income of the farmers. However, from past few years, they are facing the problem of numerous diseases in the crop and subsequent yield losses and thus
affecting the economic status of the growers. Present study was carried out with the objective to discern the current status of disease occurrence in tomato and management strategies followed by the growers of Golapar area of District Nainital, a major tomato growing area of Uttarakhand state. Purposive sampling was followed for selection of the area and respondents were selected randomly. Data was collected through structured questionnaire. It was found that tomato is the key vegetable in the area and preference of the varieties was largely based on the marketable yield, larger fruit size, higher market price and also depends on the availability of seed with the local distributer. Average loss ranges from 20-80% due to late blight, leaf curl, early blight, wilt and stem rot diseases. Application of pesticides was exceedingly high as number of pesticide sprays was varied in the range of 10-40. However, disease management varied from 5-60% depending on the chemical application by the farmers. This study will be supportive to manipulate adopted strategies to reduce the losses and low cost proven technologies can be introduced for disease management for the benefit of the farmers.