Role of biofertilizers and organic fertilizers in growth and productivity Maize (Zea mays L.) under constant levels of mineral fertilizers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59658/jkas.v12i2.3796Abstract
A field experiment was conducted in one of the fields of Ibn Al-Bitar Vocational Preparatory School, located in Al-Husseiniya sub-district, Karbala Governorate, at 32°N latitude and 44°E longitude, during the fall season of 2024. The experiment was designed using a randomized complete block design (RCBD) in a factorial arrangement with three replications. The first factor included different levels of NPK fertilizer: the full recommended dose, three-quarters of the recommended dose, and half of the recommended dose, denoted as C1, C2, and C3, respectively. The second factor consisted of the following treatments: control, sheep manure at 4 tons ha-1, poultry manure at 4 tons ha-1, sheep manure at 4 tons ha-1 + EM1, poultry manure at 4 tons ha-1 + EM1, and EM1 alone, denoted as O1, O2, O3, O4, O5, and O6, respectively. The results indicated significant differences among the NPK fertilizer levels. The C1 treatment (full recommendation) outperformed other treatments in plant height, leaf area, total chlorophyll content, 500-grain weight, grain yield, and biological yield, with means of 183.83 cm, 4121.8 cm², 0.9505 mg g-1 fresh plant tissue, 195.51 g, 7.633 Mg ha-1, and 19.34 Mg ha-1, respectively. Similarly, organic and biofertilizer treatments showed significant effects, with O4 (sheep manure at 4 tons ha-1 + EM1) demonstrating the highest values for the aforementioned traits, recording 188.33 cm, 4094.5 cm², 1.0129 mg g-1 fresh plant tissue, 206.96 g, 8.833 Mg ha-1, and 21.68 Mg ha-1, respectively. The interaction between factors was also significant, with the C1O4 combination achieving the highest values in all studied traits. These findings suggest that the addition of organic matter, particularly the O4 treatment, resulted in a substantial improvement in maize growth and productivity.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Copyright (c) 2024 is the Author's article. Published by the Journal of Kerbala for Agricultural Sciences under a CC BY 4.0 license
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Licensing Terms
All articles are published under a Creative Commons License and will be directed to the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) That permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This license also allows the work to be used for commercial purposes.
Use by both non-commercial and commercial users
This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, permitting use by both non-commercial and commercial users. Individual users may access, download, copy, display, and redistribute the articles to colleagues, as well as adapt, translate, and text- and data-mine the content, subject to the following conditions:
- The author's moral rights, including the right of attribution and the right to protect their work from derogatory treatment, are respected.
- Where content in the article is identified as belonging to a third party, users must ensure that any reuse complies with the copyright policies of the owner of that content.
- If the article content is reused for research or educational purposes, users should maintain a link to the appropriate bibliographic citation, including the DOI and a link to the published version on the journal's website.
