Station de Recherche sur les Cultures Vivrières, Bouaké (), Centre National de Recherche Agronomique (CNRA), 01 BP 633 Bouaké 01, Côte d’Ivoi, Côte d’Ivoire
Poor cultivation practices, attacks by numerous pests and diseases, unavailability of arable land in urban areas, and the excessive and unreasonable use of fertilizers and pesticides are the constraints to celosia cultivation. Faced with all these constraints, a trial was conducted to improve celosia productivity, using a split-plot system with three blocks, at the CNRA Foods Crops Research Station in Bouaké. Six doses of compost combined with six microdoses of urea were tested. The results of the growth parameters showed that the D4T5 treatment, which was a combination of 8 t/ha of compost and 3 g of urea/package, promoted very good vegetative development at 45 days. The D2T3 and D0T5 treatments, which were respectively the combination of 4 t/ha compost + 2 g urea/packet and 0 t/ha compost + 3 g urea/packet, were the most productive with 27.28±4.50 and 27.08±2.88 t/ha respectively. The optimum compost rate was therefore obtained by treatment D2 and the optimum urea rate by treatment T3. Furthermore, of all the treatments applied, treatment D0T1, a combination of 0 t/ha compost + 0.5 g urea/packet, and treatment D0T2, a combination of 0 t/ha compost + 1 g urea/packet, obtained the best agronomic efficiencies with 14.89±12.01 and 12.89±7.75 kg MS/kg respectively. It appears that the combination of urea and compost (D2T3), which seems to produce better yields, could be recommended to farmers.