Comparison of the Effectiveness of Struvite and Some Commercial Fertilizers on the Growth of Lettuce

Abstract

This paper aimed to examine the effectiveness of struvites obtained from NH4 recovery from biogas liquid fermented products as fertilizers. For this, the effectiveness of two type of struvite (STR1 and STR2) on lettuce grown in acid and calcareous soils was compared with widely used commercial fertilizers, namely diammonium phosphate (DAP), monoammonium phosphate (MAP), triple superphosphate (TSP), and 20-20-20. Therefore, 200 mgkg-1 phosphorus equivalent amount of each material was mixed with the soil. The study was performed as a pot experiment under greenhouse conditions. The experiment was arranged with three replications according to a completely randomized design, and each soil was evaluated individually. The results indicated that the treatments significantly affected the growth parameters and leaf SPAD values for each soil. In both soils, the highest plant fresh weight values obtained from STR1 and STR2 applications despite being in the same statistical group as DAP and 20-20-20 fertilizers in terms of their effectiveness. At the same time, it was observed that struvite applications in soils were either more effective or comparable to other chemical fertilizers in terms of other parameters. Overall, it can be concluded that both struvites are superior or comparable to other chemical fertilizers in the examined parameters.