author(s)
Bibas Chaulagai and Bipin Koirala

abstract
Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) most produced and marketed fruit in the world has high market potentiality in Nepal too because of its versatility in use as salad, vegetable, pickle raw material forr processing industry and high nutrient factors with huge health benefits. In recent decades off season tomato have good demand and price at both national and international level market which is attracting great number of farmers for offseason tomato farming. Exploitation of geographical variation along with integration of modern technology, equipment’s and inputs have made offseason farming more effective and productive. Along with its huge advantages, farmers have to face many problems too. Although offseason tomato production is profitable and often practised by farmers it carries lots of challenges and constraints like high loss due to market fluctuation, unfavorable government policies, climatic factors, unavailability of quality inputs, inconvenience in transportation etc. Since the optimum production requires a certain range of temperature and weather, farmers have to control microclimate around the plant for off seasonal production which requires more attention and cost. High disease and pest infestation is a major discouraging factor for farmers as it devastates the whole farm within very short period of time. Unavailability of growing land, labour, quality inputs like hybrid seeds, fertilizers, pesticides etc. during the required season are also major limiting agents. Requirement of high initial investment, unnecessary market fluctuation, inconvenience in transportation and unavailability of post-harvest infrastructure are the main components playing role to discourage growers and decrease tomato production ultimately breaking the backbone of Nepalese economy.