GROWTH AND YIELD OF LETTUCES (Lactuca sativa L) AS INFLUENCED BY CHARCOAL, SAW DUST AND REFUSED TEA WITH COW DUNG

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to study the influence of refused tea, charcoal and saw dust on growth and yield of lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) is a leafy vegetable. It was arranged in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with eight treatments contained various concentrations of organic materials and each treatment had 6 replications. Potting mixtures were soil: cow dung: organic material in different ratios as treatments. Seeds were sown in nursery trays and then healthy plants were transplanted to each polybag. Observation was made every week. Growth parameters were taken in regular interval and lettuce yield was calculated based on fresh weight of plant. The results showed that addition of refused tea and saw dust to the potting mixture positively influenced and improved the plant growth characteristics such as plant height, number of leaves, length and width of leaves, leaf area and also fresh and dry weights of shoot and root. Low results were observed in the treatment contained charcoal than refused tea and saw dust. At the harvest, treatment T4 and T7 which had refuse tea in the potting mixture and treatments T5 and T8 which had saw dust in their potting mixture attained positive result than other treatments. The highest yield of lettuces was obtained with the influence of refused tea(1.9ton/ha inT4 and 1.61 ton/ha in T7) and saw dust (1.18 ton/ha in T4 and 1.35 ton/ha in T8). The highest value of overall acceptability was noted in treatments T7 followed by T5, T4 and T3. The T7 treatment had better overall acceptability than other treatments based on the sensory evaluation.