الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
In this study, tomato plants cv. ”Alisa” were irrigated with three
different amounts of water i.e. optimum amount which was the amount of
water that added to raise soil field capacity (FC) from 70% (as reirrigated
tomato when FC DROP to 70% is considered the most suitable
irrigation regime) to 100% (T1), 66% (T2) and 33% (T3) of optimum
water amount. Also, three different drought adaptable treatments were
applied to tomato plants, i.e. drought pretreatment of seedlings (seedling
priming), spraying plants with a reflecting antitranspirant (a suspension
of calcium carbonate at concentration of 6%) or infected plants with
arbuscular mycorrizal fungus, as well as control which was not treat with
any of adaptable treatment. Decreasing amount of irrigation water applied
decreased gradually plant height, fresh and dry weights of plant organs,
leaflet area, No of days to the first anthesis (F50), fruit set percentage,
relative water content (RWC), N, P and K and total carbohydrate contents
in leaves, No of fruits/ plant, average fruit weight and early and total
yields, than those of well-watered plants (T1). The reduction in total yield
was mainly due to the reduction of both fruit weight and fruit number.
However, water deficit treatments (T2 & T3) enhanced root length, leaflet
thickness, osmotic pressure (OP) in leaves, water use efficiency (WUE)
and improved fruit quality i.e. increased vit. C, TSS, titratable acidity, and
lycopene contents and fruit firmness in ripe fruits. In addition, water
deficit treatments altered dry matter distribution in tomato plants as it
enhanced dry mater partitioning to roots on the expense of above groundorgans. All adaptable treatments used, often alleviated the detrimental
effects of water deficit treated plants (T2&T3) as they promoted plant
growth and productivity of both well watered and water stressed plants
than those of untreated (control) plants. The increase in total yield resulted from using adaptable treatments was mainly due to the increase
in average fruit weight, and to lesser extent fruit number. Adaptable
treatments also enhanced plant water relation (RWC &WUE), fruit set, N,
P, K, and carbohydrate contents in leaves and leaflet area compared to
those of untreated control, but they considerably reduced fruit quality
traits. In most cases, spraying plants with the antitranspirant material gave
the highest values of growth characteristics and yield and its components
with well watered treatment (T1) and moderate water stress treatment
(T2) but not with severe water stress treatment (T3). Using mycorrizal
inoculation treatment gave the highest values of P content in leaves, and
average fruit weight. Also it gave the second highest values (as average of
the effect of the three water regimes) of plant growth, plant water
relations and productivity characters alternately with drought
pretreatment. In addition, mycorrizal treatment gave the highest total
yield and highest total plant fresh and dry weights when combined with
lowest water supply (T3) than those obtained by other two adaptable
treatment.