PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF FLOATING SEEDBED USING DIFFERENT GROWTH PROMOTING FERTILIZERS

Abstract

Bangladesh is situated in low lying areas where a reasonable portion remains submerged for 6-9 months in year during and after monsoon which is increasing day by day due to climate change. Therefore this research was conducted to evaluate the floating seedbed output of okra and cucumber in prolonged period (6-9 months) of time at Nazirpur upazila. The experiment was conducted following a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) involving three treatments with four replications viz. T 1 : control (without organic and inorganic fertilizer), T 2 : Organic fertilizer (cow dung) and T 3 : recommended dose of inorganic fertilizers(NPK). In case of okra, the longest plant height (156.90 cm), maximum number of branches (5.50) and leaves (55.75) were found in the treatment T 3 . Regarding yield parameters, significantly higher number of fruits plant -1 , fruit length (cm), fruit diameter (cm), individual fruit weight (g), fruits weight plant -1 (g) and yield (t·ha -1 ) were 22.00, 16.38 cm, 6.48 cm, 21.67 g, 602.80 g, 12.12 t·ha -1 obtained respectively by applying the treatment T 3 . The lowest output was recorded in control for all the cases. Similar trend of growth and yield were also observed during the cultivation of cucumber under the same treatment conditions. The highest value of BCR (1.07 and 1.63) was recorded from the treatment T 3 for both okra and cucumber respectively. So floating gardening is a sustainable farming method and income strategy for rural householders in coastal flood-prone regions of Bangladesh.