Impact of Rate of Poultry Manure on Nutritional Qualities of African Eggplant (Solanum macrocarpon L.) Grown on a Degraded Soil

Abstract

In the last few decades, agricultural soils of the world are greatly affected by soil degradation which worsened food security. The ill effects of the unscientific and continuous use of chemical fertilizers coupled with expensive agrochemical input have necessitated the use of manure. Therefore, this work studied the effect of using poultry manure to amend degraded soil on the selected nutritional qualities of African eggplant (Solanum macrocarpon) leaves. Soil samples were collected from an undisturbed degraded area at three depths 0-10, 10-20 and 20-30 cm respectively. The level of degradation was determined and the poultry manure was applied at 0, 10, 15 and 20 t/ha rate respectively. At maturity, the fresh leaves were harvested and the effect of the rate of poultry manure application on moisture content, fat content, crude fibre, crude protein, ash content and carbohydrate content was determined. The highest moisture content (88.88% db), crude protein (4.79%) and ash content (1.79%) were recorded at 20 t/ha poultry manure application while carbohydrate content (4.98%), crude fibre (0.64%) and fat content (1.78%) have its highest at 0 t/ha. The result of this experiment shows great potential for land reclamation using poultry manure. Keywords: land degradation, poultry manure, land reclamation, Africa eggplant, nutritional qualities