During the last 50 years, vegetable production has increased
tremendously due to enhanced consumption of chemical fertilizers. Now,
there are indications that the highly productive fertilizer and seed
technologies introduced over the past several decades may be reaching a
point of diminishing returns.Health and ecological hazards and depletion
of non-renewable sources of energy etc. are some of the features of
long-term usage of indiscriminate and unbalanced chemical fertilizers.
Tomato is one of the most important vegetable crop of the world grown
over an area of 3.95 million hectares producing 102.26 million MT
annually. Experiments using bio-fertilizers have been done throughout
the globe but very scanty information is available on their methods of
application and their integrated use with synthetic fertilizers in
tomato crop. This book therefore, provides newer approach for increasing
crop yields, sustaining them at a high level and maintaining proper soil
and human health by including an integrated approach of organic and
inorganic fertilizers and also of organic and biofertilizer combination,
thus excluding chemical fertilizers altogether in tomato.