Effect of Oil-Cake and Amino Acid Fertilizer on Soil Bio-Chemical Properties and Pepper Yield

Abstract

A variety of organic materials has been currently used for the nutrient management in agricultural land. However, there is little study to understand the impact of organic materials for crop production with soil bio-chemical properties. The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of organic materials using pepper crop (Capsicum annuum). Using oil-cake and amino acid fertilizer as organic materials, both soil characteristics such as bio-chemical properties and microbial community and pepper yield were tested for three years. The pepper was cultivated with four different treatments; Control (No fertilizer), NPK (inorganic fertilizer), OCF (Oil-cake), and (OCF+AAF) (Oil-cake with amino acid fertilizer). The result of soil properties showed that available phosphate content and microbial biomass were the highest in NPK and organic matter content was higher in OCF and OCF+AAF than NPK. Biochemical properties including activities of β -glucosidase, acid phosphatase, alkaline phosphatase and arylsulfatase were not different among all treated samples. For pepper yield, OCF and OCF+AAF showed 10 - 40% less than NPK. Therefore, this study concludes that organic materials affect microbial biomass linked with organic matter contents and alter the soil microbial community.