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The Effect Of Poultry Manure On The Growth And Yield Of Two Varieties Of Tomatoes (lycopersicon Esculentum)
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Tomato originated
in South America, but its cultivation has today spread to nearly all
parts of the world. But however, it was introduced to West Africa by the
Portuguese in the 16th century. The world’s cultivation of tomato is
put to about 4 million hectares of which 63,482 hectares are estimated
to be cultivated. In Nigeria, FAO (2010) reported an estimated annual
production of 1.7 million tones. But however, this was still far below
demand as there was an increasing demand from human consumption.
However,
most of the deficits were offset by importation. Although, despite a
drive towards increased tomatoes production in Nigeria, an optimum
production has not been realized by the framers to meet its demand among
consumers.
Generally, tomato production in Nigeria has been low
because of low yields obtained by small scale farmers resulting from the
use of unimproved local varieties with low yielding capacity which
often grown in mixtures and this may prevent exploitation of crop
productive capacity, environmental hazards such as drought and incidence
of pest and diseases, plant population including soil fertility decline
and a host of other factors have also kept tomato yield output
relatively low (Adekiya and Ojeniyi, 2002).
The use of inorganic
fertilizers alone has not been helpful under intensive Agriculture
because it aggregates soil degradation (Sharma and Mittra, 1991). The
degradation is brought about by loss of organic matter which
consequently results in soil acidity and low crop yields (Ojeniyi,
2000). The quantity of soil organic matter depends on the quality of
organic material which can be introduced into the soil either by natural
returns through roots, stubbles, sloughed-off root nodules and root
exudates or by artificial application in the form of organic fertilizer
such as poultry manures. (Agboola and Omueti, 1982). Poultry manure is
an important means of maintaining soil fertility status. It is cheap,
readily available and more environmentally friendly. Nutrients contained
in organic manures are released more slowly and are retained for a
longer time in the soil, thereby ensuring long residual effect (Sharma
and Mittra, 1991). Inorganic fertilizer on the other hand have high
concentration of nutrients and readily available to crops but its use is
hampered by its inaccessibility to majority of the farmers due to high
cost in developing countries including Nigeria (Webber et al., 1999).
The
application of poultry manure was reported Ewulo et al., (2008) to
significantly affect tomato plant height, number of branches, root
length, number and weight of fruits of tomatoes.
In recognition of
the increasing economic importance of tomatoes, intensifying production
through the use of improved varieties and organic manure has become
imperative.
Most of the varieties available to farmers are local and
low yielding, generally sown in mixture with other vegetables or
cereals. Therefore, the performance and yield potentials of high
yielding varieties such as Roma VF and UC 82B released by NIHORT need to
be evaluated to replace the low yielding local varieties currently in
use by farmers.
Objective
The present study was conducted to
determine the optimum poultry manure rate for these two varieties of
tomatoes in rainforest zone of Nigeria.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]A field experiment was carried out at the Teaching and Research Farm of the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Benin, Benin City to investigate the effect of different levels of poultry manure on the growth and yield of two varieties of tomatoes. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. The treatment composed of four levels of poultry manure (0, 5, 10 and 15 tha-1) and two varieties of tomato (UC82-B and Roma VF). Each replicate had 8 p ... Continue reading---
