Response of gerbera cv. Antibes to different organic growing media under naturally ventilated polyhouse

Abstract

An investigation was carried out at Department of Horticulture, Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat, to study the effect of different growing media in improving growth, flowering, physiological, soil microbial and bio-chemical properties of gerbera cv. Antibes. The experiment was conducted with five different growing media i.e. partially decomposed rice husk, vermicompost, enriched compost, soil based biofertilizer and control. The experimental design was laid out in Completely Randomized Design with three replications. Among the growing media, enriched compost was found to be superior with respect to plant height (66.05 cm), number of leaves per plant (38.50), plant spread (53.50 cm), leaf area per plant (5828.37 cm2), leaf area index (2.06), net assimilation rate (0.067 mg cm−2 day−1), leaf area duration (64.40 LAI days), leaf relative water content (87.14%). Diameter of flower (10.43 cm), number of flowers per plant (13.50) was recorded highest in enriched compost. Enriched compost demonstrated clear increase in soil enzymes such as phosphomonoesterase (374.22 μg p-nitrophenol g−1 soil h−1), fluorescein di-acetate (10.03 μg fluorescein g−1 soil h−1), dehydrogenase (281.82 μg TPF g−1 soil 24 hr−1) activity in this experiment. Available N, P2O5, K2O in soil were also increased in application of organic growing media. Application of enriched compost resulted in highest available P2O5 content (33.72 kg ha−1) in soil. The study was done to motivate the growers of Assam to take up application of organic amendments in flower cultivation and to know the impact of it on growth and development of gerbera. The present study revealed that the use of organic amendment is useful to gerbera as it gives significantly higher values than the control plots.