Effect of Organic Materials on Soil Physio-Chemical Properties at Bayero University, Kano-Nigeria

Abstract

Soil management using organic materials is one of the strategies of soil conservation and nutrients enhancement. This work evaluated the effect of organic materials (Poultry manure and Millet-chaff) on physio-chemical properties of soil at Agricultural and Environmental Engineering Departmental farm, Bayero University, Kano-Nigeria. Three different points were randomly selected and the soil samples were collected at (0-20 cm, 20-40 cm and 40-60 cm) making a total of nine samples. The physio-chemical properties of the soil samples were analyzed in the Laboratory and t-test was conducted to analyse the effect of these organic materials on soil physiochemical properties before and after application. Based on the analyses of the results, it was discovered that some of the physiochemical properties were responsive to the organic materials used. Moreover, the findings revealed that poultry manure and millet chaff improved some of the properties such as moisture content by 23.9 % (from 13.4 % to 16.6 %) and 43.3 % (from 13.4 % to 19.2 %), respectively.  The soil was also found to be acidic with pH value of 6.13 and 6.33 after application of poultry manure and millet chaff materials respectively. The salinity level of soil treated with millet chaff reduced by 53% (from 0.328 dS/m to 0.154 dS/m) while soil treated with poultry manure slightly reduced by 12.2% (from 0.328ds/m to 0.288ds/m). The organic matter, Nitrogen, Phosphorous and   Potassium values of soil were increased by 79.3% and 26%, 23% and 23.2%, 45% and 30.4%, and 53.2% and 28.8% for the soil treated with poultry manure and millet chaff respectively. The result of t- test revealed that, there is significant difference in some of physiochemical properties of the soil after organic materials was applied. The findings revealed that organic materials used can be adopted as a substitute to inorganic fertilizer and based on this note that, farmers are advice to make the maximum utilization of organic material rather than inorganic fertilizer which is expensive and sometimes detrimental to the soil and therefore to the yield of the plant.