Abstract

Author:
B. Nepali, G.P. Chataut, A. Bhusal, A. Bhandari, B. Chaudhary, L. Kathayat

Doi: 10.26480/jwbm.01.2024.41.46

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Farmers in Nepal overuse or under use urea in okra production, which is a major cause of soil acidification and nutrient imbalance. A better approach is to apply organic and urea together, which can help to reduce soil acidity and nutrient imbalance problems in the mid- hills of Nepal. Therefore, a field experiment was carried out from April to July 2023 at Sundarbazar, Lamjung to evaluate the combined effect of urea and organic manures on growth and yield of okra. The experiment was carried out in a randomized complete block design with five treatments viz. control, cow manure + urea, buffalo manure + urea, goat manure + urea and goat manure + buffalo manure + urea, each replicated four times. Goat manure and urea fertilizer combination produced a significantly higher number of leaves (9.2) at 60 days after sowing (DAS), while the lowest number of leaves (4.93) was observed in the control treatment. Similarly, at 60 DAS, the goat manure and urea treatment produced a significantly higher number of pods (19.58), while the control plot had the lowest number of pods (7.48). The goat manure and urea treatment also produced a significantly higher number of primary branches (3.3), followed by cow manure and urea (2.33), while the control plot had a significantly lowest number of primary branches (1.3). Out of all the treatments, cow manure and urea resulted in the largest fruit diameter (17.24 mm), while the control treatment had the smallest fruit diameter (1.3 mm). Maximum organic matters (3.6%) and phosphorous (24.85%) content was obtained in combination of goat manure and urea after laboratory test. Least amount of organic matters content in control plot.