The effectiveness of NPK on eucalyptus grandis performance in the nursery

Abstract

The demand for quality seedlings by tree farmers in Uganda has increased the struggle and pressure to the nursery managers and thus in turn, this has resulted into increased research on how to improve on the quality of the supplied seedlings. Basing on this, farmers have adopted theuseof intensive techniques of production mainly through the use of organic and inorganic fertilizers due to the deterioration of most soils in Uganda. This has been pursedas a strategy to improve the forestry sector among countries. This research focuses on the effectiveness NPK fertilizers in enhancing the performance of eucalyptus grandis in nurseries. Through this experiment, variables such as seedling height, cola diameter and the number of branches where measured at a weekly basis over a period of three weeks. The set up involved 5 replicates organised in a complete randomised design, each containing 10 potted eucalyptus grandis seedlings making the total of 50 potted plants where one replicate(A) was taken as the control and quantities 10,20,30 and 40g NPKfertilizers where applied to replicates B,C,D and E respectively. Analysis of variance was used so as to find out the difference in performance under the different quantities of NPK. However since this couldn’t directly provide us with the most appropriate quantity for the growth of eucalyptus seedlings, Least significant difference(LSD) was used to find out the Significance between different NPK quantities and their effect on seedling cola diameter, height and number of branches. The results that, the treatment of 20g performed better from the time of application, 40g of NPK resulted into death of Eucalyptus seedlings hence treated plots with 40g had a poor performance. The results show that replicate C with 20g of NPK were found to be significant and therefore this document recommends 20g to be used in the growth of Eucalyptus grandis in the nursery.