COMBINED EFFECT OF DIFFERENT LEVELS OF ORGANIC AND INORGANIC FERTILIZERS ON GROWTH AND YIELD OF SPINACH

Abstract

The experiment was conducted at HSTU, Dinajpur from October 2023 to December 2023, to study the combined effect of different levels of organic and inorganic fertilizers on growth and yield of spinach. The experiment was placed out in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with 7 treatments and 3 replications. The treatments were; T1 = control (only soil); T2 = 70% soil + 20% vermicompost (VM) + 5% sand + 5% ash + 2.0 g/kg bone meal powder; T3 = 65% soil + 25% VM + 5% sand + 5% ash + 1.5 g/kg bone meal powder; T4 = 70% soil + 20% VM + 5% sand + 5% ash + 1.5 g/kg bone meal powder; T5 = 60% soil + 20% VM + 15% sand + 5% ash + 2.0 g/kg bone meal powder; T6 = 60% soil + 25% VM + 10% sand + 5% ash + 1.0 g/kg bone meal powder and T7 = 60% soil + 25% VM + 5% sand + 10% ash + 1.0 g/kg bone meal powder. In case of chemical fertilizers, Urea, TSP and Gypsum were mixed with each treatment mixtures except T1 during soil preparation as per 2.45 g kg-1, 0.85 g kg-1, 1.25 g kg-1 and 0.49 g kg-1 material, respectively. The soil was sandy loam and the pH, organic matter, total nitrogen, available phosphorus, exchangeable potassium, and available sulphur were 6.60, 0.42%, 0.04%, 4.90 ppm, 0.03 meq 100g-1 and 5.52 ppm respectively. The results revealed that the highest growth and yield characters viz., plant height (21.67 cm at 45 DAS), leaf number per plant (10.11 at 45 DAS respectively), yield (13.92 g pot-1) were observed from T3 and the lowest growth and yield characters were found in T1. Soil pH, organic matter, total N, available P, exchangeable K, and available S content in post-harvest soil were also influenced by the application of different organic and inorganic fertilizers. It is showed that the performance of the treatment T3 was the best among the other treatments. Therefore, this study reveals that the application of 65% soil + 25% VM + 5% sand + 5% ash + 1.5 g kg-1 bone meal powder of soil mixtures might be an effective practice for attaining economical spinach production.