Proportional Supplementation Of Top Soil With Rice Husk And Fractional Addition Of Poultry Manure Influenced Growth And Yield Of Carrot (Daucus Carota L.) In Two Pot Experiments

Sustainable production of fresh fruits and vegetables all year round could be achieved in urban and periurban by providing technologies amenable to their situations, such as container production of crop. As such, six growth media for container farming of carrot were evaluated in two pot experiments. The experiments were conducted in open field at the Department of Crop Science, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Topsoil (TS) was amended with varying percentage proportion (0-; 0+; 10; 15; 30; 45 %) of rice husk (RH) and fractional (2%) addition of poultry manure (PM). The six media formulated were composted for eight weeks and were bagged accordingly, having 10 replications per media. The experiment was laid out in a completely randomized design (CRD) and data were collected on number of harvestable roots, weight of sample roots, whole plant biomass weight (and distribution into leaf and root), root length and circumference, total weight of harvestable roots, weight of and percent marketable roots. Data were subjected to ANOVA and significant treatment effects were determined at 5% probability level. All the parameters measured responded significantly (p ≤ 0.05) to the growth media effects in the second experiment; but non-significant effects were recorded for most parameters except root length and percent biomass distribution, in the first experiment. The highest values for most parameters were from 100% TS + 2% PM or 85% TS +15% RH +2% PM. Supplementation of TS with 30% RH also supported comparable growth and yield effects with the best media. The poorest plant performance was in 100% TS without an addition of PM. The two experiments showed that these two formulations (85% TS + 15% RH + 2% PM and 100% TS + 2% PM) were the best media compositions for growing carrots in pots in the study area