Improving Yield of Corchorus Olitorus I. with Legacy Fertility of Jack Bean Fallow and Compost Amendments in an Organic Farming System

Summary

Ability of applied soil fertilizer to sustain crop production beyond a cropping season is an advantage to farmers, especially resource constraint organic farmers who cannot afford repeated application of organic fertilizers. Thus, this report presents evaluation of legacy soil fertility (residual) influence of previous Jack bean-fallow and a commercial compost application on the yield of corchorus in an organic farming system in two cropping seasons. The experiment was conducted at the Organic Vegetable Garden of Teaching and Research Farm, University of Ibadan, Corchorus seed were sown in plots of Brewery Waste Compost grades A and B, Brewery Waste Compost grade A +Jack bean residual fertility, Brewery Waste Compost grade B + Jack bean residual fertility, Jack bean residual and Control (no soil additive). The experiment was laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RBCD) replicated four times having a total land area of 166.4m2 with 24 beds of 1.5m x 1m each. Plant yield data were subjected to statistical analysis of variance using GENSTAT edition 5 and means were separated using least significant difference (LSD) at (p≤ 0.05).
In the first season, Brewery Compost Grade B resulted into the highest dry weight of corchorus (1.93 t/ha) which was not significantly higher than that of combination of Brewery Compost Grade A+ Jack bean (1.84 t/ha), while Brewery Compost Grade A+Jack bean (2.21 t/ha) resulted into highest dry matter yield in the second cropping. Thus, it could be concluded that combination of Brewery Compost Grade A + Jack bean could be used for producing corchorus by resource constraint farmers who may not be able to apply additional fertilizer in second cropping.