Agronomic performance of carrot fertilized with scarlet starglory before sowing

Abstract

The scarlet starglory is an herbaceous plant native that is presented as a potential source for green manure in the semi-arid northeast of Brazil, and generates many benefits, especially the increased availability of nutrients for crops. The objective of this present study was to evaluate the agronomic performance of carrot fertilized with scarlet starglory before carrot sowing. An experiment was conducted at the teaching garden of the Plant Sciences Department, Universidade Federal Rural do Semi-Árido (UFERSA), Mossoró-RN, from September to December 2008. The experimental design used was a randomized complete block with treatments arranged in a 4 x 4 + 1 factorial scheme, with 3 replications. The first factor was composed of the quantities of scarlet starglory incorporated into the soil (5.4; 8.8; 12.2 and 15.6 t ha^-1 on a dry basis), and the second factor by the times of scarlet starglory incorporation into the soil (0; 10; 20 and 30 days before sowing of carrot - DBS). The additional treatment (control) was fertilized with 80 t ha^-1 of cattle manure. The characteristics evaluated were: plant height, leaf number per plant, dry mass of shoot, commercial productivity, scrap productivity, classified productivity. There was no significant interaction between the quantities of scarlet starglory incorporated into the soil and its times of incorporation before carrot sowing on any of those evaluated characteristics. The highest productive performance of carrot was obtained in the amount of 15.6 t ha^-1 of scarlet starglory incorporated into the soil at the time of 20 days prior to the carrot planting time.