Growing vegetables
Javad َAhooei; Ali Reza Astaraei; Reza Khorassani; Amir Lakzian
Abstract
Introduction
Management of municipal wastes as well as their reuse is one of major concerns of researchers in recent decades due to the expansion of urbanization and increase in production of municipal waste. Composting and use of municipal waste is one of the solutions used in the management ...
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Introduction
Management of municipal wastes as well as their reuse is one of major concerns of researchers in recent decades due to the expansion of urbanization and increase in production of municipal waste. Composting and use of municipal waste is one of the solutions used in the management of these materials. Implementation of various additives to enrich and improve the properties of the produced compost is one of the common methods to increase the efficiency of produced compost. Different organic and inorganic compounds are used to enrich the produced compost. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of two organic compounds (blood powder and bone powder) and a mineral compound (phosphate soil) on the composting properties of municipal waste. It was also our goal to find the effect of these treatments on growth characteristics and concentration of nutrients in shoot of spinach was evaluated.
Materials and Methods
This research was conducted in two stages. The purpose of the first part was to investigate the effect of organic and inorganic additives on the properties of municipal waste compost. Experimental factors included four types of composts including control compost (without additives); compost plus 1% blood powder; compost plus 1% bone powder and compost plus 5% phosphate soil. After sieving the waste and removing the waste leachate, about 60 kg of waste was weighed for each treatment and placed in plastic barrels with a volume of 100 liters for better control of aeration conditions. The compost ripening factors were stable after 90 days, when it was screened and materials were separated, then some of its properties include acidity, electrical conductivity, organic carbon, total nitrogen, C/N ratio, iron, humic acid, fulvic acid, and other parameters including humification ratio, humification index and degree of polymerisation were measured. In the second phase, the effect of compost enriched with blood powder, bone powder and phosphate soil treatments was compared with control treatment (without compost) on growth characteristics and nutrient concentrations in spinach shoots in a greenhouse experiment. For this purpose, pots (with a diameter of 25 cm and a height of 30 cm) were packed with 8 kg of soil in which enriched composts was mixed in 5 g compost/kg of soil ratio. After preparing the pot, the humidity reached 65% of the field capacity and after 25 days, 6 spinach seeds (Spinacia oleracea L.) were planted. After 50 days of planting, the plants were harvested and parameters such as shoot dry weight, leaf area, nitrogen, iron and phosphorus were measured.
Results and Discussion
Results of enriched compost showed that the highest amount of reduction in EC (with 14.5%) and OC (with 8.9%) was resulted in phosphate soil treatment and the highest reduction in C/N ratio (with 46.8%) was related to blood powder treatment. Regarding to the other variables, the highest N and Fe concentrations was related to the blood powder treatment with 2.5% and 706.6 mg/Kg and the highest P content with 1.66% was observed in phosphate soil treatment which had a significant difference with control. Regarding to the Humification indices the highest difference with the control treatment in Fulvic acid content with 24.5% was related to bone powder treatment, that of Humic acid content with 32.4% and Polymerization rate with 43% was related to phosphate soil. In this experiment, the amount of organic carbon was expected to increase in blood powder and bone powder treatments, which was not the case. This may be due to the effect of these treatments on increasing microbial activity such as microbial respiration and increasing the decomposition of organic carbon which ultimately leads to a decrease in the amount of organic carbon. The increase in EC in organic treatments compared to inorganic treatments may be due to weight loss of organic matter and release of various mineral salts. The effect of experimental treatments in the greenhouse section also showed that highest difference in plant dry weight compared to the control was related to the blood powder treatment with 59% increase and regarding to the leaf area with 31.9% increase through application of the blood powder and phosphate treatments. The highest amount of Fe and N absorption in spinach shoots was also observed in blood powder treatment with 1177 mg/Kg and 3.13% respectively. Phosphate soil with high amounts of phosphorus increased the amount of this element in the shoots of spinach. The two combinations of blood powder and bone powder caused a significant increase in these elements in the compost and in most of the measured parameters, due to their high amounts of nitrogen and iron. These two organic substances were significantly different from the control.
Conclusion
The results of this study showed that the enrichment of municipal waste compost using organic and inorganic additives can compensate for the lack of some elements in the compost and further increase the growth of spinach. Adding blood powder increased the concentration of iron and nitrogen in the shoot and decreased the C/N ratio compared to the control treatment. Also, the positive effect of phosphate soil and bone powder are effective in increasing the phosphorus content of compost. In addition, the combination of phosphate soil with municipal waste compost due to the formation of more stable materials such as humic acid and folic acid prevents their subsequent wastage. Finally, it can be concluded that in this experiment, two treatments of blood powder and phosphate soil have the best effect on enrichment and they had increased growth characteristics of spinach and in general, and blood powder was selected as the best treatment.
Homa Azizi; Parviz Rezvani Moghaddam; Mahdi Parsa; Reza Khorasani; Mahmood Shoor
Abstract
Introduction: Meadow saffron (Colchicum) is a non-domesticated medicinal plant, rich in isoquinoline alkaloids. These alkaloids are used in medicines mainly for their anti-gout and myorelaxant properties. Meadow saffron has an unusual biology that does not favor cultivation. Flowers of Meadow saffron ...
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Introduction: Meadow saffron (Colchicum) is a non-domesticated medicinal plant, rich in isoquinoline alkaloids. These alkaloids are used in medicines mainly for their anti-gout and myorelaxant properties. Meadow saffron has an unusual biology that does not favor cultivation. Flowers of Meadow saffron appear in September and fruits mature in June. The corms enter dormancy phase in winter (January to March) and after fruiting in summer (June to September). Each year, a mother corm produces one daughter corm, or sometimes two daughter corms. The uptake of mineral element in plant is a complex process that governed by numerous factors influencing each other. nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium application can significantly increase the yield and improve the quality of plants. Meadow saffron need more consider in fertilization managements in comparison with other crops because it has shallow roots than other crops and exposes to more problems in uptake of immobile nutrients in the soil. The object of this study was to determine the effect of different fertilizers and mother corm weight on yield characters of Colchicum kotschyi Boiss.
Materials and Methods: This experiment was conducted as factorial layout based on a randomized complete block design with three replications at Research Station, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran, in two years, 2012- 2013 and 2013-2014. The Corms of Colchicum kotschyi Boiss. were harvested from natural site of Binalood Mountains during their summer dormancy. The mother corm weight was considered as a factor in the experiment, because of the variation between the collected corms. In order to evaluate fertilizers effect, soil analysis was conducted. So, the experimental factors were: mother corm weight (less than 40 g and more than 40 g), cow manure (0 and 50 t.ha-1), urea (0 and 50 kg.ha-1) and superphosphate (0 and 25 kg.ha-1). Before planting, cow manure and superphosphate were well mixed with soil and urea was added to soil during emergence of leaves. Planting date was 28th August 2012. Planting depth was 12-15 cm and the space between plants was 25 cm. During flowering, flower number was recorded. Plants were harvested when the color of leaves and capsules were changed from yellow to brown, and characteristics such as corm yield, seed yield, biological yield, 1000-seed weight, capsule number, capsule dry weight, seed number, seed dry weight, corm and seed HI were measured. Data analysis was done by SAS Ver. 9. Mean comparisons were done by LSD test at 5% probability.
Results and Discussion: At the first year of experiment, most of transplanted corms did not flower due to transplanting. Therefore, just the results of the second year were presented here. The results showed that mother corm weight had significant effect on the yield (p≤0.05). The weight of daughter corms was increased by increasing mother corm weight, because of more supply of nutrients. The weight of the corm is basically determined by the amount of total food stored in the corm by the plant through the process of photosynthesis. The initial plant growth and its vigor are determined by the amount of food supplied to the growing plant by the corm. The results showed that seed yield characters were affected by the cultivated corm weight. The most flowers per area unit, capsule number per plant, seed number and dry weight per plant were belonged to heavier cultivated corms. The effect of corm weight on corm HI was not significant (p≤0.05), but smaller corms had more seed HI than bigger corms (p≤0.05). The effect of cow manure on most characters was significant (p≤0.05). Corm yield and corm HI increased in cow manure treatment in comparison with control. Organic fertilizers cause improvement of soil structure, better development of roots, regulation of soil temperature and useful microorganisms, supply of nutrients for plant and supports plant in nutrient absorption. Capsule number, capsule dry weight and seed number per plant were not influenced by cow manure. The number of capsules per plant and the number of seeds per capsule were determined during fertilization. The only parameter that can vary during capsule development was the thousand-seed weight. The results showed that seed dry weight per plant, 1000-seed weight, seed yield and seed HI were decreased in cow manure treatment in comparison with control. It seems that cow manure has more effect on vegetative growth and decrease proportion of seed compared to corm in whole plant weight. Meanwhile, the competition between corm and seed for photosynthetic materials may decrease seed dry weight. The effect of superphosphate was significant on some studied characters. Superphosphate utilization was increased corm yield and biological yield compared to control. Many researchers reported that phosphorus that was effective in leaf photosynthesis and carbon metabolism in plants. Phosphorus increased seed dry weight per plant, seed yield and 1000-seed weight. Phosphorus is a very important nutrient in plant nutrition and is more effective in the formation of flower, fruit and seed. Many researches have shown that phosphorus promote reproductive growth.
Conclusion: The results showed that colchicum could have a good response to treatments especially cow manure and superphosphate. It seems that more levels of fertilizers especially urea could improve quantitative and qualitative yield of plant.
Fariborz Alizadeh Zarmehri; Gholamhossein Davarynejad; Reza Khorasani; Seyyed Hossein Nemati; Peyman Keshavarz
Abstract
Introduction: Pear producers around the world are looking for faster return of capital and saving in labor costs, achieved well by high density orchard planting. Choosing a good combination of scion and rootstock is critical for production of fruit trees because the relationship between the rootstock ...
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Introduction: Pear producers around the world are looking for faster return of capital and saving in labor costs, achieved well by high density orchard planting. Choosing a good combination of scion and rootstock is critical for production of fruit trees because the relationship between the rootstock and scion has a decisive effect on plant water relations, leaf gas exchange, plant size, flowering, fruit production, fruit quality and production efficiency. Nowadays in some regions, growers are using quince rootstock for pear orchard establishment. Using the quince rootstock alleviates many problems in pears orchard, but graft incompatibility between pear scion and the quince rootstock, and resistance to frost and alkaline soils are some problems restricting the use of this rootstock. In most pear-producing regions in Iran, pear seedling is used for pear propagation. Due to the problems of pear including overgrowth and late precocity (after 4 -5 years), this research evaluated the effects of pear clonal rootstock (Pyrodwarf, OHF and Quince c) on some growth characteristics in comparison to pear seedling (Pyrus communis).
Materials and Methods: This research was conducted during 3 years from 2014-2016 in Chenaran (36.6, 59.1) in northeast of Mashhad. Maximum and minimum temperatures were 40 and -22 ˚C, respectively, elevation 1176m and the average annual rainfall 240mm. The same tissue culture rootstocks from two cultivar Pyrodwarf and OHF with Quince rootstock and annual seedling from Dragazi pear were selected in August 2013 and T-budded with three commercial cultivars Spadona, Ntanz and Sebri. In the spring of 2014, after relieving frost danger, the trees were planted in field with row space 4×2m. In order to investigate dwarfing effect of rootstock on scion cultivar, some important vegetative factors that represent dwarfing effect of rootstock including trunk cross sectional area, height of tree, amount of lateral branch growth, tree growth rate during growth season, mean of growing buds on each lateral branch, and stem and leaf water potential were measured. This test was conducted in factorial based on randomized complete block design with 4 replications. Each plot was included one hybrid combination. MSTATC and Excel software were used for data analysis, and differences among means were compared by using LSD test.
Results and Discussion: Different rootstocks did not show any significant difference in terms of leaf water potential. Leaf water potential during the seasons had a constant time course about scion cultivar on all rootstock so while temperatures rise throughout the season it reduced the amount of leaf water potential. The effect of cultivar was significant on leaf water potential so that the highest water potential was related to Natanz and the least water potential was related to Serbi cultivar. The effect of rootstock and scion both on stem water potential was significant. Therefore the highest and lowest stem water potential was recorded for cultivars grafted onto the seedling and quince rootstock, respectively. In this study, a significant relationship was observed between minimum stem water potential (mid-day) and branch growth rate during the growing season. With reducing stem water potential as a result of temperature increase, the amount of branch growth reduced. The effect of both scion and rootstock on chlorophyll index was significant. In this investigation, all 4 rootstocks had different effects on chlorophyll index. The highest chlorophyll index was related to cultivar Natanz and the least was related to Spadona. Sebrie had medium chlorophyll index. Rootstock effect on vegetative growth of the scion was not significant but the effect of scion was significant at 5% level. Pear seedlings with vigorous growth had more long branches than other rootstocks. In the present research, seedling rootstock also induced higher growth of lateral branches. Furthermore, quince rootstock induced the least growth of lateral branch during 3 years of the investigation. In addition, quince rootstock had the minimum tree height and pear seedling had the maximum tree height. Internode length in dwarfing rootstock was less than seedling. Both scion and rootstock had significant effect on trunk sectional area so that at the end of three years, cultivars grafted on seedling rootstock had the highest trunk cross sectional area, and cultivars on quince rootstock had the lowest TCSA. Two vegetative pear rootstocks (Pyrodwarf and OHF) did not show significant difference from each other. Pyrodwarf and OHF rootstock showed good compatibility with Natanz and Spadona scions like seedling rootstock. On the other hand, the survival percentage on quince rootstock was really low.
Conclusion: This investigation showed that pear rootstock had less vegetative growth than seedling rootstock and induced dwarfing effect on scion growth during 3 years but quince rootstock had more dwarfing effect.
