Modeling the influence of floriculture effluent on soil quality and dry matter yield of wheat on Fluvisols at Ziway

Abstract

Greenhouse experiments were conducted at DZARC on soil sampled from farmers’ field to examine the influence of floriculture effluent on soil quality and crop performance, and to see the most likely trends. The sample was splitted into two; the first remained to be as it is while the second was subjected to sterilization and call it non-sterilized (NS) and sterilized (S) soil, respectively. Seven rates of effluent was used as a treatment and laid out in CRD with four replications. The effluent was found to have high pH, EC, N, P, S, exchangeable bases, low in micronutrients and very low in heavy metals. The shoot dry weight was reduced by 36.9 and 58.8 % for NS and S soils respectively in the first harvest. The second round experiment further confirmed that it keeps decreasing due to effluent additions. However, at lower volumes, the non-sterilized soil showed benefit from the effluent and hence the value started to increase but later it followed the same trends with application of higher volumes. Chemical properties were highly influenced by effluent additions. The pH and EC continuously increased whereas OC and TN increased to some extent but decreased as the volume of effluent increased. Exchangeable bases and micro-nutrients were continuously increased. The trends indicated that dry weight on Fluvisols will decline corresponding to the decrease in soil organic matter while pH, CEC and ESP continuously increases ending in the shift of slight alkaline soil to sodic soil. Generally, the effluent was found to disturb the performance of the crop and soil quality parameters. Disturbance in terms of shoot dry weight and soil quality parameters revealed that it was much less for the NS owing to the presence of organism.

Keywords? Effluents, floriculture, non-sterilized, sterilized, soil quality