Comparison of organic material application methods at "Majuro Atoll"

Crop, Livestock & Environment Division, Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences, Tsukuba, Japan
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1764v1
Subject Areas
Agricultural Science, Environmental Sciences
Keywords
Sweet corn, Vegetables, Water lense, Coral sand, Copra cake, No chemical
Copyright
© 2016 Oda
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Oda M. 2016. Comparison of organic material application methods at "Majuro Atoll" PeerJ PrePrints 4:e1764v1

Abstract

The climate of Majuro Atoll is stable, and the soil is coral sand which has low levels of organic matter and nutrients and high percolation rates. This relatively stress-free climate and simple soil environment provides ideal conditions for the study of organic material application methods. In this study, I examined the efficiency of organic material application methods in five experiments using sweet corn crops. I obtained the following results: 1) Biomass output was correlated with residue input; however, input/output ratios converged to 0.5 at 15 Mg ha-1 a year (3 Mg ha-1 per crop). 2) The most efficient residue application rate was 2–3 Mg dry matter ha-1 crop-1. 3) In terms of organic material application methods, scattering was the most effective, followed by incorporation. Cutting, short-term fermenting, mulching, and crop bed were not effective because of the areas humid climate and low levels of soil organic matter.

Author Comment

This is a preprint submission to PeerJ PrePrints.

Supplemental Information

Figure 7: Location of Laura farm

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Figure 8: Residue (before incorporation) of experiment 1

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Figure 9: Copra cake (before incorporation) of experiment 1

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Figure 10: Residue and copra cake (before incorporate) of experiment 1

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Figure 11: Experimental field of experiment 1

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Figure 12: Treatment of experiment 2 (from the gate side)

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Figure 13: Treatment of experiment 3

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Figure 14: Shredded corn residue

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Figure 16: Fungi of started propagating

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