Poljoprivreda (Dec 2009)
COMPUTER MODEL FOR ORGANIC FERTILIZER EVALUATION
Abstract
Evaluation of manures, composts and growing media quality should include enough properties to enable an optimal use from productivity and environmental points of view. The aim of this paper is to describe basic structure of organic fertilizer (and growing media) evaluation model to present the model example by comparison of different manures as well as example of using plant growth experiment for calculating impact of pH and EC of growing media on lettuce plant growth. The basic structure of the model includes selection of quality indicators, interpretations of indicators value, and integration of interpreted values into new indexes. The first step includes data input and selection of available data as a basic or additional indicators depending on possible use as fertilizer or growing media. The second part of the model uses inputs for calculation of derived quality indicators. The third step integrates values into three new indexes: fertilizer, growing media, and environmental index. All three indexes are calculated on the basis of three different groups of indicators: basic value indicators, additional value indicators and limiting factors. The possible range of indexes values is 0-10, where range 0-3 means low, 3-7 medium and 7-10 high quality. Comparing fresh and composted manures, higher fertilizer and environmental indexes were determined for composted manures, and the highest fertilizer index was determined for composted pig manure (9.6) whereas the lowest for fresh cattle manure (3.2). Composted manures had high environmental index (6.0-10) for conventional agriculture, but some had no value (environmental index = 0) for organic agriculture because of too high zinc, copper or cadmium concentrations. Growing media indexes were determined according to their impact on lettuce growth. Growing media with different pH and EC resulted in very significant impacts on height, dry matter mass and leaf area of lettuce seedlings. The highest lettuce seedlings with highest mass and leaf area are produced using growing media with pH close to 6 and with EC lower than 2 dSm-1. It could be concluded that conductivity approx. 3 dSm-1 has inhibitory effect on lettuce if pH is about 7 or higher. The computer model shows that raising pH and EC resulted in decreasing growth which could be expressed as increasing stress index. The lettuce height as a function of pH and EC is incorporated into the model as stress function showing increase of lettuce height by lowering EC from 4 to 1 dSm-1or pH from 7.4 to 6. The highest growing media index (8.1) was determined for mixture of composted pig manure and peat (1:1), and lowest (2.3) for composted horse manure and peat (1:2.)
