Acta Agriculturae Zhejiangensis ›› 2021, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (9): 1700-1709.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1004-1524.2021.09.14

• Environmental Science • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Feasibility of cow dung compost substituting peat in seedling nursery of three Solanaceae plants

YIN Zexin(), ZHANG Lu*(), HAO Dan, BAI Yifan   

  1. College of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
  • Received:2020-12-07 Online:2021-09-25 Published:2021-10-09
  • Contact: ZHANG Lu

Abstract:

To explore the feasibility of cow dung compost substituting peat in seedling nursery of three Solanaceae plants (eggplant, chili and tomato), the manure compost and peat were used as the main raw materials for seedling substrates, and five kinds of seedling substrates, including 100% (volume fraction, the same as below) cow dung compost (T1), 75% cow dung compost+25% peat (T2), 50% cow dung compost+50% peat (T3), 25% cow dung compost+75% peat (T4), and 100% peat (CK) were prepared. The physiochemical properties of the five seedling substrates were determined, as well as the emergence rates of three Solanaceae plants. Besides, the principal component analysis was introduced to analyze the relevances within the physicochemical properties of seedling substrates and the emergence rates of Solanaceae plants. It was shown that when the volume fraction of cow dung compost was no bigger than 75%, it could improve the nutrients contents and physical environment of seedling substrates. Under the above five seedling substrates, the emergence rates of eggplant were less than 80%, which did not meet the production standard. When the volume fraction of cow dung compost was 50%, the chili emergence rate was the highest (98%). When the volume fraction of cow dung compost was 25%, the tomato emergence rate was 88%. Although it was lower than that under CK (96%), the emergence rate still met the production standard. In general, neither cow dung compost nor peat were suitable for seedling nursery of eggplant, yet for the seedling nursery of chili and tomato, the substituion ratio of peat by cow dung compost could reach 50% and 25%, respectively.

Key words: cow dung compost, peat, Solanaceae vegetable, seedling substrate

CLC Number: