Influence of Conventional and Non-conventional Organic Sources of Plant Nutrients and Industrial Refuse for Yield and Quality Enhancement of Radish

House hold waste compost
 
Big size imperishable waste is manually collected to composting yard. Individual households deliver segregated imperishable waste separately driving by door-to-collection by the municipal organization, which are formed into heaps.  The organic materials mainly vegetable, fruit and kitchen waste were parted manually and exposed to turn windrows composting process. Aeration to the pile was typically provided by physical turning of waste of a heap of manually parted mixed house hold solid waste of 4' height, 8' breadth formed on concrete ground by composting windrows type and was sprayed with water periodically to maintain the moisture at 50% and turned manually utmost for three days during first 6 weeks of composting. On 7^th week onwards, the moisture content was allowed to fall down, when ideal bio-solids putrefaction is attained and the process is finished in about 8 weeks. Subsequently, it was cured for additional three weeks period without turning. The finished compost was then screened out and weighed. The NPK composition of house hold waste compost (HSWC) made is furnished in (Table 1).
 

 
Farmyard manure (FYM)
 
To prepare FYM, a trench size of 6.9 m × 1.5 m × 1.0 m was formed under shade. Urine soaked refuses together with dung was gathered and placed in the trench. Filling of pit was done from one corner of the trench with daily collections of dung, when the trench was loaded to the elevated extent of 0.45 m above floor level, the top of the heap was made in to dome shape and covered with cattle dung slurry and the manure is ready in four months after plastering. The composition of FYM prepared and utilized in the investigation is furnished in (Table 1).
 
Bagasse ash
 
It is a type of organic wastes obtained from sugar industries. It is a refuse generated at industrial plants when biomass is being used as power source. The resulting bagasse ash is an alkaline material contains nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). It was collected from Co-operative Sugar Mill, Sethiyathoppe Tamil Nadu, in dry form and utilized in the experiment. The NPK composition of bagasse ash utilized in the study is furnished in (Table 1).
 
Rice hull ash
 
It is also called husk char or black ash and is a resultant product of flaming rice husk in fired furnace of conventional and modern rice mills. It was procured from modern rice mills near Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu and utilized in the experiment and their NPK content is furnished in (Table 1).
 
Sampling of organic sources and industrial refuse
 
The treatment samples sources were collected, mixed thoroughly and made into heaps. The homogenous samples from heaps were drawn by means of a scoop from different parts viz., front, middle and back at different depths and the bulk sample is reduced to one kg by quartering. The final homogenous samples were subjeted to various analyses. Sample was digested in diacid mixture (HNO₃:HClO₄ 9:4) and analysed for total N (Humphries, 1956), P and K was digested in triacid mixture (HNO₃:H₂SO₄:HClO₄ 9:2:1) in the extract as per standard procedures analyzed for total P and total K (Jackson, 1973).
 
Collection of soil samples
 
The soil was gathered from Vallampadugai village of Chidambaram taluk, Tamil Nadu to conduct the pot experiment. A pot experiment conducted during 1^st October 2019 to 15^th November 2019 at Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry with radish as a test crop. The physico-chemical properties of soil used for the experiment are provided in (Table 2). Standard methodologies are adopted for evaluating the soil properties.
 

 
Pot experiment
 
Twenty kg of processed soil was filled up in 32 cm × 25 cm cement pots. The trial was conducted in a completely randomized design with the following nine treatments and each treatment was repeated 3 times.
 
Treatment details of pot trial experiment
 
T₁- Control-100% recommended dose of fertilizer  (50:100:50 kg of NPK ha^-1); T₂ - T₁+ household waste compost @ 7.5 t ha^-1; T₃ - 75% recommended dose of fertilizer + household waste compost @12.5 t ha^-1; T₄ - T₁+ farm yard manure @ 12.5 t ha^-1; T₅ - 75% recommended dose of fertilizer  + farm yard manure @ 25 t ha^-1; T₆ -T1+ rice hull  ash @ 7.5 t ha^-1; T₇ - 75% recommended dose of fertilizer+ rice hull ash @ 12.5 t ha^-1; T₈ -T₁+ bagasse ash @ 7.5 t ha^-1; T₉ - 75% recommended dose of fertilizer  + bagasse ash @ 12.5 t ha^-1.
 
Root yield pot^-1
 
The radish root yield from every plant of each treatment was recorded at the time of harvest. The mean root weight obtained in each treatment was noted as g pot^-1.
 
Shoot yield pot^-1
 
The shoot yield of each labeled plant was recorded during the time of harvest. The mean shoot weight obtained in each treatment was expressed in g pot^-1.
 
Quality attributes
 
Total chlorophyll content
 
Leaf samples drawn at 25 DAS were evaluated for total chlorophyll content by acetone extraction method as suggested by Arnon (1949).
 
Total carbohydrate content
 
The root was analyzed for its carbohydrate content by Anthrone method (Hedge and Hofreiter, 1962) and expressed in percentage.
 
Crude protein content
 
The crude protein content of root was computed by multiplying its nitrogen content with a factor 6.25 (A.O.A.C, 1970) and expressed in percentage.
 
Ascorbic acid content (mg 100 g^-1)
 
The root was evaluated for its ascorbic acid content by A.O.A.C. (1970) and expressed in mg 100 g^-1 of fresh samples.
      
The data were analysed using AGDATA and AGRES software. Experimental design was adopted based on Panse and Sukhatme (1985).

Yield 
Root and shoot yield of radish pot^-1
 
The data on the efficacy of conventional, non-conventional organic sources and industrial refuse on root yield of radish were furnished in (Table 3). There was a significant variation among treatments on root yield pot^-1 and it ranged from 555 g to 845.9 g pot^-1. Among the treatments, highest root yield pot^-1 was registered under the treatment T₅, which registered a root yield of 845.9 g pot^-1. The data on shoot yield (Table 4) showed significant differences among the conventional, non-conventional organic sources of plant nutrients and industrial refuses and it ranged from 351.3 to 501.9 g pot^-1. Among the treatments, the highest shoot yield 501.9 g pot^-1 was registered  in treatment T₅. This was confirmed in the present study (Fig 1) by significant linear relationship observed between root yield with shoot yield (Y=1.8953x-157.82 R²=0.7323). The role of manures in intensifying the growth parameters of radish is well known as they have a positive relationship with growth as observed in the experimental study. A similar finding was earlier reported by Sharma and Singh (1991); Rahevar et al., (2015). The increased root yield of radish is ascribed to solubilizing effect of plant nutrients by the inclusion of FYM and reflected in the uptake of NPK, Ca and Mg. Residual effect of FYM also helped in increasing the nutrient assimilation of plants. Superimposition of FYM with fertilizer had a spectacular influence on crop yield, which was greater than with rest of the treatments. This improvement in crop yield with NPK and FYM could be due to improved vegetative growth and carbohydrate translocation. The maximum yield due to INM combinations may be associated to the balanced C/N ratio (Shelke et al., 2001). Among the industrial by-products, T₇ registered a root yield of 630 g pot^-1 and a shoot yield of 435.9 g pot^-1. This is because of contribution of nutrients, in addition to improvement in soil physical environment leading to better soil WHC and subsequent effect of rice hull ash have resulted in maximum root and shoot yield (Karmakar et al., 2009; Prabhakar Reddy et al., 2010).
 

 

 

 
Quality attributes
 
Chlorophyll content
 
The maximum chlorophyll content of 1.38 mg g^-1 (Table 4) was registered in treatment T₅. The fertilizers together with conventional, non-conventional organic sources and industrial refuse influenced the chlorophyll content of radish significantly. Chlorophyll in a plant is the key for the production of plant metabolic products viz., proteins, glucosides, tannins, tetraterpenoids. The chlorophyll of crop greatly influences the production of specialized metabolites and other necessary plant constituents. Improvement in chlorophyll content of radish may be due to greater availability and uptake of nutrients by the plants. (Rajakumaran et al., 2015).
 
Crude protein
 
Crude protein content of radish root was remarkably increased by the conventional, non-conventional sources and industrial refuse. The maximum crude protein content of 0.85% (Table 4) in radish root was registered in treatment (T₅), this could be because of supplemental supply of FYM could have contributed the available nitrogen and resulted in assimilation of crude protein (Sunanda et al., 2014).
 
Total carbohydrate content
 
Carbohydrate content in radish root was remarkably increased by the supply of conventional, non-conventional plant nutrient sources and industrial refuses. The treatment T₅ registered the maximum total carbohydrate of 4.76% (Table 4). Supply of FYM together with fertilizers resulted in healthy growth of crop and recorded cloudy green colour of foliage. This favoured the carbon fixation of plants and resulted in great synthesis ‘of carbohydrates. Similar result, were earlier observed by Garhwal et al., (2014).
 
Ascorbic acid content
 
From the outcome of the present investigation, it was evident that the highest ascorbic acid content of 15.90 mg kg^-1 in radish root was registered in T₅ than any other treatments tried (Table 4). It could be inferred that compost enhanced the growth by encouraging substances, which accelerate the soil physiological process like reduction of dehydro ascorbic acid, which promote synthesis of vitamin C. Similar observation was earlier made by Hisham Aziz Amran et al., (2014); Prabhu et al., (2018).

We thank Annamalai University, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu for providing support for the conduct of the experiment.