EVALUATION OF VEGETABLES PRODUCTION ON ROOFTOP GARDEN: A RESEARCH ON URBAN AGRICULTURE

Abstract

Urban agriculture is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around a village, town, or city. Roof top garden is suitable for vegetables cultivation in our country. Tomato is an important vegetable of robi season and okra and chili are important vegetables of summer season. This experiment was conducted at roof of third floor of Biotechnology Department of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka during the period from November 2015 to July 2016. The experiment was laid out in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) having single factors with three replications. The treatment of this experiment were T 1= Straw mulch, T 2= ii Wood ash and T 3= Control. The seedlings of BARI tomato-3 and BARI morich – 1, seeds of BARI derosh 1

were collected from Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Joydebpur, Gazipur. Plant height, stem diameter, number of leaves per plant of tomato, okra and chili are superior in mulching than control. The total yield of tomato, okra and chili were also varied significantly due to the application of different mulching. The highest yield of tomato fruit (29.18 t/ha) was obtained from T 2 (wood ash), while T 3 (control) gave the lowest (21.24 t/ha) yield. The highest fruit yield of okra was recorded (13.48 t/ha) of T 2 (wood ash)

and the lowest yield of okra was recorded (8.583 t/ha) of T 3 (control) which was statistically similar with T 1 treatment. The maximum fruit yield of chili was recorded (2.8oo t/ha) of T 2 (wood ash)

and the minimum yield was (1.900 t/ha) of T 3 (control)

treatment. The results clearly showed that the fruit yield per hectare was increased with the using of mulch materials at rooftop garden. It is apparent that growth and yield of tomato, okra and chili may be increased by using wood ash and straw as mulching materials which create favorable climatic condition in soil environment.