Dananjana GAN* and Thayamini H Seran
Department of Crop Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Eastern University, Chenkalady, Sri Lanka
Abstract
Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp.) is a significant food and grain legume in the semi-arid tropic.
Red onion peels are utilized to produce organic potassium rich fertilizer for the cultivation of crops. Hence, this experiment was
carried out to study the effect of red large onion (Allium cepa L.) peel solution as a foliar application on the growth and
yield of cowpea. It was designed in a randomized complete block design with six treatments (20, 40, 60, 80 and 100% onion peel solution
and control with water). In this experiment, the red large onion peels (100 g) from kitchen waste were added to one litre of water and
then kept at room temperature for 48 hours. Thereafter, the liquid solution was filtered using a 1 mm-sized mesh sieve and filtered solution
was considered as 100% onion peel solution. The treatments were applied at two weeks intervals starting from two weeks after planting seeds.
The results revealed that foliar application of onion peel solutions led to significant (P<0.05) effects on tested parameters over the control.
The application of 40% concentration onion peel solution increased the plant height, number of leaves and number of branches per plant, at 9th
week after planting and also number of nodules was recorded after harvesting pods. Among the treatments, the application of 100% concentration
onion peel solution gave the highest values in many measured yield parameters. There were no significant differences in these parameters between
plants applied with 80% and 100% onion peel solutions. Further, significantly (P<0.05) highest yield was obtained in plants treated with 100%
onion peel solution (403.64 g/m2) followed by 80% solution application (342.17 g/m2) compared to the control treatment (112.41 g/m2). Therefore,
it could conclude that 80% - 100% concentrations of onion peel solution could be used to enhance the seed yield of Vigna ungiculata L.
Keywords:
Compost, cowpea, foliar application, onion peel solution, yield
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