A comparative study of seed to seed and set to seed methods as affect by organic fertilizer of onion cv. Texas Early Grano

Abstract

A study was conducted at the vegetable farm of Horticulture and Land scape design Department of Agriculture and Forestry College / Mosul University ,to compare onion seed production cv. Texas Early Grano by two planting methods seeds and sets .Three organic fertilizers i.e. Rotten sheep manure ( 80m2. ha-1 ) , chicken manufactured manure ( atalpollina 15 t.ha-1 ) and humic organic fertilizer ( pow humus 2 g.l-1+ Fitohum 1g . l-1 ) , and chemical fertilizer ( NPK ) as recommended by Iraqi Agriculture Ministry ( 120 kg.ha-1 Urea + 260 kg.ha-1 Super phosphate+ 200 kg.ha-1 Potassium Sulfate) as a control treatment . A split plot system with Randomized Complete Block Design (R.C.B.D) was used to carry out this experiment with three replicates.Results shows that plants produced from sets method were superior significantly than plants produced by seeds methods in seed stalk height , percentage of bolted plants , number of bulb produced from doubling plants , mean number and weight of umbels and also seed yield ( 260.71% ) , seed index ( weight of 100 seeds ) .Whereas the two planting methods did not show significant differences in seed viability of the produced seeds . Addition of chemical or organic fertilizers had no significant effect on all studied traits except fertilized with humic acid which gave higher seed yield(27.32%) than chemical fertilized plant. Highest seed yield ( 1751.13 kg.ha-1) produced from set plants fertilized with humic acid.