Germination and early leaf production

TABLE 4 & TABLE 6

Although not greatly differing, the treatments with the high organic manuring (3, 7 and 8) ranked highest in speed of emergence and were exceeded in the numbers of leaves produced only by the treatment planted with sword suckers (1), which also had the high level of manuring. The low level of organic manuring (2) was better than the three inorganic fertiliser treatments (4, 9 and 10) and the two pesticide only treatments (5 and 6) but the latter five treatments were all similar in their growth performance. The presence (5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10) or absence (2, 3 and 4) of the pesticides had no obvious effect on growth performance at this early stage.

Growth rates

TABLE 5 & TABLE 7

The same general picture of greater plant growth with the higher level of manuring persisted throughout the first year of observation. The use of pesticide (carbofuran or isazophos) at the time of planting appeared to have a slight negative effect on vegetative growth but not on sucker production at both sites. This negative effect on growth was more noticeable in the treatments with five debes of manure but it was not significant. The two sites, however, differed markedly when the performance of the lower levels of manuring are considered.

At Kibeta (Table 5) the growth enhancement by the NPK treatment was comparable to the benefit of the use of a single debe of manure, with the growth on stools with either of the two NPK plus pesticide treatments being somewhat less vigorous. The stools planted without any added manure were very much the poorest by all three measures of vigour, and the plants seemed likely not to attain maturity.

By contrast, at Nyakato, the addition of a single debe of manure or of the NPK conveyed no benefit when compared with the two treatments without extra manure. The stools which had received five debes of manure clearly were more vigorous, especially in sucker production.

The most plausible conclusion seems to be that the residual soil fertility in the trial site at Nyakato was of a reasonable level but at Kibeta the soil was severely impoverished. It was very noticeable that the farm management by the owner was better at Nyakato than at Kibeta. The best performance at both sites and by all three measures of vigour, although not statistically significant, was achieved by the stools planted with the traditional sword suckers. The very limited data on heights at flowering was similar to the vegetative data considered above.

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