EFFICACY EVALUATION OF VERMICOMPOST AND INORGANIC FERTILIZER APPLIED IN LOWLAND RICE

Abstract

The study was conducted to evaluate the effect of vermicompost on the growth and yield of rice as well as on the return on investment on December 2007 to September 2008 at Jose Rizal Memorial State College, Katipunan Campus, Katipunan Zamboanga del Norte. Three treatments were laid in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with four replications. The vermicompost application alone and the amalgamation of inorganic fertilizer and vermicompost has no significant difference in the height as compared with 60 DAT inorganic fertilizer both in 1st and 2nd trial. It was at harvest that rice applied with inorganic produced a significantly tallest plants among the treatments in 1st trial. Other than that, it generated a dramatic increase in ROI when employing vermicompost supplemented with inorganic fertilizer (103.8%) which is comparably the same with inorganic fertilizer (119.6%) in the 2nd trial. This indicates a favorable effect on the growth, yield and return on capital in rice production when vermicompost was added with inorganic fertilizer and further entails that it can be a substitution to pure inorganic fertilizer application.