Response of Kale (Brassica Oleracea L) Crop to Cyanobacterial Biofertilizer in Ziway Area, Ethiopia

Abstract

Gradual soil fertility depletion is resulted in declining agricultural production and  productivity  generally in Ethiopia. It is obviously understood that commercial fertilizers have helped to improve yield of crops. Use of this inputs among smallholder farmers are very low in the study area due to higher costs, accessibility and crop nutritional quality reduction. This experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of cyanobacterial biofertilizer on yield and nutritional quality of kale (Brassica Oleracea L.) crop in Ziway. Five treatments: liquid cyanobacterial, dry cyanobacteria, urea, cattle manure and control were laid out in RCBD with three replications. All necessary data from each experimental treatment were collected and subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA).The results showed that plant height, leaf number and leaf nitrogen have increased when liquid cyanobacterial biofertilizer was applied by 13.97cm, 2.68, and 3.07% over the control, respectively whereas the application of dry cyanobacterial biofertilizer has increased the plant shoot fresh weight, shoot dry weight, leaf area, Leaf phosphorus and plant beta carotene by  341.8 g, 26.8g, ,2089.1 cm, ² 2.43 g, _, 0.187 mg kg-1 and 0.9 µg/g over the control, respectively. Therefore, the use of cyanobacterial as a biofertilizer should be recommended as an alternative source of inorganic N fertilizer to increase yield and nutritional quality of kale crop for medium and small-sized farms in the study area.

Keywords: Anabaena spp, Biofertilizer, β-carotene content, Cyanobacteria, Kale crop and N-fixing