Institut Pédagogique National de l’Enseignement Technique et Professionnel, Département de Formation des Formateurs aux Métiers de l’Agriculture, 08 BP 2098 Abidjan 08, Côte d’Ivoire
To ensure the sustainability and productivity of the cocoa crop, replanting on non-forested sites such as old orchards or young fallow lands raises the problem of the survival and establishment of seedlings, due to the low fertility of the soil, particularly in phosphorus. Thus, in order to minimize mortality and improve juvenile growth and flowering precocity of cocoa trees, organic, mineral and organo-mineral fertilizers were applied to a fallow land with low phosphate fertility, in Soubré, in the southwest of Ivory Coast. The experimental design was a partially balanced incomplete block design with 12 treatments and three replications. The treatments consisted of two fertilizer applications per year for each plant: compost (T1); phospho-compost (T2); TSP + compost (T3 and T4); NPK based on natural phosphates (T7, T8 and T9), combined with compost (T5 and T6) or phospho-compost (T10 and T11) at different doses. Growth parameters and flowering were evaluated. Treatments T2 (phosphocompost 1 kg), T3 (TSP 75 g + compost 2 kg) and to a lesser extent T11 (NPK 0-15-15 300 g + phospho-compost 1 kg) were the most efficient. They allowed a better growth, a good precocity of crowning and flowering. All the treatments tested did not impact the mortality rate of young cocoa trees. These results could allow farmers to exploit favorably soils with low fertility, with the guarantee of a good establishment of cocoa plants in the field during the juvenile stage.