Abstract
A nursery study was conducted in College of Forestry, Kerala Agricultural University, Vellanikkara to find out the effect of potting media containing different types of waste materials like garbage and coir dust on establishment, growth and vigour of seedlings of Terminalia paniculata Roth. The seedlings raised in potting media T1 (Soil: sand: cowdung), T5 (Soil: fresh garbage: cowdung) and T12 (Soil: coirdust: cowdung) recorded 100 per cent success with regard to both initial establishment after one week of planting and final survival after eight months. In most of the treatments, the initial establishment was found to be good. The initial establishment and survival were very poor when fresh garbage alone was used as a planting medium. With regard to growth and vigour in terms of shoot and root growth parameters and other physiological attributes, potting mixtures of soil and cowdung with four weeks decomposed garbage were found to be most promising. Growth and vigour was generally found to be less when seedlings were grown in coirdust. The relative growth rate and other physiological attributes were also found to be less for this treatment. Generally, the chlorophyll A content was found to be slightly higher when compared to chlorophyll B. Stomatal distribution did not show a specific pattern with regard to treatments. Nutrient uptake particularly nitrogen was found to be more when cowdung and partially decomposed garbage were used as components of potting media. However, the potting media did not affect the uptake of potassium and phosphorus.
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