Laboratoire de Géosciences et Environnement, Unité de Formation et de Recherche des Sciences et Gestion de l’Environnement, Université NANGUI ABROGOUA (UNA) Abidjan (), 02 BP 801 Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoi, Côte d’Ivoire
Urban agriculture, improving the environmental sustainability of cities, contributes to the food security of urban populations in developing countries. The major cultural constraint of sandy soils in the city of Abidjan is its low organic matter content. This study aims to evaluate the effects of three types of solid organic farm waste on eggplant growth and yield. After characterizing the soil of the experimental site, a randomized Fisher block design was used. It consisted of four repetitions of four treatments: a control (C), beef dung (BD), laying hen droppings (LD) and rabbit droppings (RD). These fertilizers were applied by mixing them into the 0-20 cm layer of soil at the rate of 500 g/plant, or 10 t ha -1. Beef dung had the best effects on the height (34.93 cm) and collar diameter (0.11 cm) of plants on day 35. It also gave the highest net yield (28.70 t ha-1), without being statistically different from those of the plots with laying hen droppings (20.63 t ha-1) and rabbit droppings (15.15 t ha-1), but different (p ˂ 0.01) from the lowest yield (0.9675 t ha-1) recorded in the control plots. However, the beef dung caused yield losses due to spoiled fruits. Thus, composting of these wastes, especially the beef dung, would be recommended to improve their quality.
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.