Effects of locally available fertilizing agents on the growth and yield of Zea-mays

Abstract

Manure potentials of three organic fertilizers locally available in Nigeria: cow-dung, soya beans cake and ground nut cake were investigated and compared with NPK, an inorganic fertilizer. The final grain yield at 12% moisture content shows that G/nut cake has the highest yield followed by NPK, soya beans cake, cow dung and control with the least yield. It was observed that though NPK had the largest percentage of Nitrogen and potassium, it did not perform better than Ground nut cake plot. Groundnut cake and soya beans cake compete favourably with conventional NPK fertilizer. Ground nut cake has the lowest ash content (4.13%), followed by soya beans cake (5.42%), NPK (37.43%) and then cow dung (70.79%) with the highest value.

Keywords: Organic fertilizer, growth, yield, low income.