Abstract:
The cost of inorganic fertilizers is prohibitively expensive for resource challenged
small holder farmers in the coastal lowland Kenya. Use of organic fertilizers has the
potential to improve the productivity of maize-cowpea based cropping systems. A
study was carried out at Pwani University and Kenya Agricultural and Livestock
Research Institute (KALRO) Mtwapa in 2011 and 2012 to determine the effects of
farmyard manure levels on soil moisture content, canopy temperature, growth and
yield performance of maize-cowpea intercrop. The treatments comprised two
cropping systems and three farmyard manure levels. The farmyard manure levels
comprised: control (no manure), 2.5 t manure ha-1 and 5.0 t manure ha-1. The
experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design, with a factorial
arrangement of treatments and replicated three times. Data collected included: soil
moisture content, canopy temperature, weed biomass, chlorophyll content, percent
ground cover, leaf number, plant height, grain weight and grain yield of maize and
cowpea. Cowpea root nodule number, numbers of pods per plant, number of grains
per pod, maize ears per plant and stover yield were also determined. Data was
analyzed using the general linear model (GLM) procedure for analysis of variance
using SAS statistical package. Where the F values were significant, means were
compared using the least significant difference (LSD) test, at p = 0.05. Farmyard
manure application increased soil moisture content and groundcover, chlorophyll
content, growth parameters, yield and yield components of maize plants; however,
it reduced canopy temperature and all cowpea plant attributes. DH04-cowpea
intercrop outperformed Lamu-cowpea intercrop in most plant attributes. The
performance of DH04-cowpea intercrop was significantly higher than Lamu-cowpea
intercrop.
