Effect of composts based on sewage sludge and market gardening waste on the growth and yield of tomato

Author: 
Maïmouna LO, El hadji Mamadou SONKO, Arfang Mafoudji SONKO, Diomaye DIENG, Saliou NDIAYE and Cheikh DIOP

In urban and peri-urban areas, wastewater and sewage sludge are used without prior treatment to fertilise vegetable soils. To this end, sewage sludge treated with market garden waste was tested to evaluate the morphological performance and yield of tomatoes. Thus, the composts based on faecal sludge and market garden waste are T0, T1 and T2 (for respectively T0: composted faecal sludge alone, T1: compost with 2/3 faecal sludge and 1/3 market garden waste and T2: compost with ½ sewage sludge and ½ vegetable waste). For this purpose, a market garden bed set-up allowed a comparison of growth and yield parameters with a series of morphology measurements and fruit weighing at harvest. The results obtained over two tomato growing seasons revealed interesting morphological performances and appreciable yields found in the literature. In fact, in the first and second seasons, tomato plants that were fertilized with treatments T0, T1 and T2 showed greater height gain than the other treatments (non-composted sewage sludge (BVNC); chemical fertiliser (EN), no-input plot). Besides, between these compost treatments, T1 gives satisfactory results. With the yields obtained at harvest, the vegetable beds fertilized with T1 show the highest yields (27,718kg/ha) than the other treatments (no-input plot, T0 and T2 for 13076kg/ha; 22847kg/ha; and 24829kg/ha respectively).

Paper No: 
3956