Effects of Organic Manures and Their Combination With Urea On Sweet Pepper Production in the Mid-hills

Abstract

Using excessive chemical fertilizers to combat increasing challenges for food has been creating a serious threat to the environment. To address this contemporary problem field experiments were carried out during March-July, 2010 and February-August, 2011 to evaluate the effect of organic manures and their combination with urea on production of sweet pepper in a randomized complete block design. Farmyard manure, goat manure, vermicompost, their combination with urea, and inorganic fertilizers alone were used as treatments based on fulfillment of required nitrogen (150 Kg/ha) for the crop. The results showed that application of FYM-50%+urea-50% gave the highest fruit set (45.7%) and took least number of days (49.67 days) to first flowering. Weight per fruit was the highest (98.30 g) with FYM-50%+urea-50% followed by vermicompost-100% (94.52 g). The highest fruit yield (13.53 t/ha) was recorded with FYM-50%+urea-50% followed by goat manure- 100% (11.95 t/ha), both being at par. Physiological weight loss was the highest (16.4%) with inorganic fertilizers and was the lowest (6.7%) with goat manure 100%.