Abstract
Plant growth is seriously affected by abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity or temperature. Drought is one of
the most important limiting factors for agricultural crops and vegetable production in particular all around the
world. Drought stress during vegetative or early reproductive growth usually reduces yield by reducing the number
of seeds, seed size and seed quality. To assess the effect of drought stress on seed yield, seed quality and
growth of tomato, the experiment was conducted in green house in plastic pots at Pen-y-Fridd field station,
University of Wales, Bangor, U.K. during 2003-2004. Tomato cv. ‘Moneymaker’ was used as a test crop. There
were four treatments i.e. early stress (when first truss has set the fruits), middle stress (when fruits in first truss
were fully matured and started changing their colour), late stress (when fruits on first truss were ripened fully),
whereas in control no stress was imposed. Analysis of data regarding various attributes (fruit weight and shoot dry
weight per plant, number of seeds per fruit, total number of seeds and seed weight per plant and vigour of seed)
showed that drought stress had non-significant effect on vigour, quality and yield of tomato seed. Plant height,
number of leaves and number of fruits per plant showed significant results toward drought stress signifying
drought effects on growth of tomato.
