Influence of groundnut and bean seeds fortification with slaughterhouse and palm oil mill wastewaters on growth performance

Abstract

Recycling of waste water for agriculture can improve environmental sustainability while improving cost of farming. The aim of this work is to study the growth performance of groundnut and bean seeds fortified with slaughter house and palm oil mill waste waters. For each wastewater type, 6 concentrations of 100, 75, 50, 25, 10 and 5% were prepared with tap water as the control. The seeds were soaked in each of these samples for a period of 5 hours, 10 hours and 24 hours. The germination percentage was monitored for four weeks while leaf number, and stalk length were monitored for 14 weeks. The soil used was a gravely sandy soil with a bulk density of 2.39 g/cm³. For palm oil mill wastewater, optimum germination for beans seeds was obtained with 10 hours of fortification as germination occurred in all tested concentrations and the control from week two in equal amounts. Meanwhile germination of groundnut seeds fortified with palm oil mill wastewater for 5 hours started with 5, 25 and 75% in week 2 but germination was observed in all concentrations from week 3 and control in week 4. For slaughter house wastewater, optimum germination for groundnut seeds was obtained with 24 hours of fortification for 5-100% in week 2 in equal amounts and control in third week, with similar results for beans fortified for 10 hours. Longer fortification periods (10 and 24 hrs) are more favourable in case of slaughter house wastewater for both seeds germination irrespective of the slaughterhouse wastewater concentration but shorter fortification period favourable for palm oil wastewater (5 hours for groundnut and 10 hours for beans).  This results shows that at low concentrations of wastewaters tested irrespective of the fortification time, inhibitory effects on the germination percentages were low compared to higher concentrations.