I. D. Bake and Amina, I. O.
Abstract
Pawpaw seedling growth and development is subject to the micro climatic conditions in the growth environment and the availability of plant nutrients in such environment. Study was conducted at the screen house of the Department of Horticultural Technology, Federal Polytechnic Mubi in September, 2018. The objectives of the study were to evaluate the effect of different sources of organic manure on the emergence and growth of Pawpaw seedlings and also to determine the most effective growth medium for propagating Pawpaw seedlings. The design used for conducting the study was Completely Randomized Design (CRD) comprising of four (4) treatments replicated three (3) times. The treatments used were Compost manure (T1), Cow dung (T2), Goat droppings (T3) at twenty-five (25Kg) each and Top soil (T4) to serve as control. The respective Organic manures were mixed with top soil and river sand at a ratio of 2:1:1 and filled in a total of One hundred and twenty (120) polythene bags with five (5) polythene bags sown with healthy and diseased free pawpaw seeds representing a treatment. Data were collected on Emergence count (%) at 3 WAS, Plant height, Stem girth and Number of leaves at 4, 6, 8 and 10 WAS. Results obtained revealed that T1 had the highest emergence count of 85% followed by T2 with 60.00% while the lowest emergence count of 40.20% was recorded with T4. Result on plant height showed that T1 recorded the highest plant height of 80.20cm at 12 WAS, followed by T2 with 70.20cm while T4 had the least plant height of 48.30cm. Furthermore, results on stem girth indicated that T1 had the largest stem girth of 49.69mm, followed by T2 with 28.33mm with T4 obtaining the lowest stem girth of 14.84mm at 10 WAS. On number of leaves per plant, results revealed that the same T2 recorded higher number of leaves (9) followed by T2 and T3 with 8 while the least number of 7 leaves was recorded on T4 at 10 WAS. This study has therefore demonstrated that pawpaw seedlings raised with 20Kg of compost manure performed better than the other soils mixture on pawpaw seedlings growth and development in the study area.