EFFECT OF DIFFERENT FARMYARD MANURE LEVELS ON SOIL MOISTURE CONTENT, CANOPY TEMPERATURE, GROWTH AND YIELD OF MAIZE – COWPEA INTERCROPS

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.