Growth and yield of onion as influenced by organic and inorganic fertilizer in Edo rainforest of Nigeria

Ej Falodun,Rka Egharevba,Jo Ehigiator

doi:10.4314/as.v12i3.3

Abstract

The current study was to determine the effect of NPK 15:15:15 and poultry manure on the growth and yield of onion plant (Allium cepa L.). Two field experiments were carried out at the Faculty of Agriculture Teaching and Research Farm, University of Benin during the 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 dry croppping seasons of October – March . The experiment was a factorial combination of four levels of NPK 15:15:15 inorganic fertilizer at 0, 40, 80 and 120 kg /ha NPK and four levels of poultry manure at 0, 5, 10 and 15t/ha laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Each replicate had 16 plots making it a total of 48 plots. Data were collected on growth and yield characters and analysed. Results of this study indicated that there was a significant interaction between the poultry manure and NPK 15:15:15 fertilizer on some growth and yield attributes. Application rates of 80 kg/ha NPK 15:15:15 in combination with 15t/ha poultry manure enhanced the growth and yield of onion in terms of crop growth rate, chlorophyll content, harvest index and individual bulb weight of onion and significantly produced the highest yield of (29.55 t/ ha) in 2011/2012 and (28.17 t /ha) in 2012/2013. However, application rates of 120 kg/ha and 15 t /ha produced the highest (7.06 and 6.89 t / ha) shoot yield for 2011/2012 and 2012/2013 respectively .Keywords: onion, manure, harvest index, crop growth rate,

Highlights

Organic manures alone are unable to give economic yield in some crops and it is vital to find appropriate combination of inorganic and organic manure to obtain financially viable yield of crops. Jeyathilake et al (2006) stated that integrated use of organic manure and chemical fertilizers resulted in onion yield increase in comparison with the exclusive application of chemical fertilizers
Plants treated with 80kgha-1 produced the highest growth rate and this was followed by plants which received either 40 or 120kgha-1 which were at par and significantly increased Crop growth rate (CGR) above the controls treatment which produced significantly lowest CGR
Plants treated with 15 kg ha1 poultry manure resulted in the highest CGR and this was significantly increased above other treatments

Summary

Introduction

Organic manures alone are unable to give economic yield in some crops and it is vital to find appropriate combination of inorganic and organic manure to obtain financially viable yield of crops. Jeyathilake et al (2006) stated that integrated use of organic manure and chemical fertilizers resulted in onion yield increase in comparison with the exclusive application of chemical fertilizers. A or inorganic alone because inorganic fertilizers promotion effect of organic and inorganic release the nutrients quickly and fulfill the plants fertilizers on chlorophyll contents might be need at the appropriate time, while the organic attributed to the fact that N is a constituent of manure being slow releasing recaptures the growth chlorophyll molecule. This was again emphasized rate in latter stages. Amino acids in protein and lipids that act as a Continuous use of inorganic fertilizers as structural compounds of the chloroplast

Results

Discussion

Conclusion