EFFECT OF DIFFERENT SOURCES OF ORGANIC MANURES ON THE GROWTH AND YIELD OF BROCCOLI

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at the Horticulture Farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka during the period from October 2005 to February 2006. The trial was conducted in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications to study the effect of different sources of organic manures on the growth and yield of broccoli. The experiment consisted of five different sources of manures; control (no manure), cowdung (26.5 t/ha), water hyacinth compost (10.6 t/ha), poultry litter (16.56 t/ha) and vermicompost (12.26 t/ha), and two cultivars of broccoli; „Sotomidori‟ and „Premium crop‟. Different sources of manures and cultivars had significant influence on plant height, height up to curd, number of leaves per plant, length of leaf, breadth of leaf, plant canopy, diameter of curd, diameter of stem, weight of primary curd, dry weight of curd, number of secondary curd, weight of secondary curd, yield per plant, yield per unit plot and yield per hectare. The maximum yield (14.50 t/ha) was obtained from poultry litter followed by vermicompost in „Sotomidori‟ (14.12 t/ha) cultivar. The minimum yield (7.37 t/ha) was recorded by no manure in „Premium crop‟. Control treatment showed the lowest values for all the parameters studied. Combination of poultry litter and „Sotomidori‟ cultivar was found the best among all other treatment combinations in respect of net return (Tk. 224381/ha) and BCR (4.41).