Seed Coating with Organomineral Fertilizer, an Alternative Method to Improve the Efficiency of Farming

Abstract

Seed and fertilizer are two important farming inputs, which are commonly available and used separately. Combining both materials into a unit of fertilizer-coated seed may improve farming efficiency. However, the appropriate seed coating method must be found out, and this research was the first effort of finding the method. A glasshouse experiment was carried out to identify the growth and yield of the coated seeds of rice and groundnut with organomineral fertilizer in three different sizes, i.e., small (SS), medium (MS), and big sizes (BS). Four sets of experiments were prepared, two of those were for testing two varieties of rice and the others were for testing two varieties of groundnut. Each experiment was laid out in a complete randomized design; the treatment was the size of coated seeds (SS, MS, BS, and a control - uncoated seeds) in triplicates. Results reveal that the seed coating delayed the germination of rice seeds for 2 – 3 days and groundnut seeds for 7 – 16 days, suppressed the growth and yield of rice but improved the growth and yield of groundnut. The highest yield of groundnut was the grown groundnut from the small and medium sizes of coated seeds (weight ratios of 1:4 and 1:9). The reduces of growth and yield of rice were most probably due to the direct contact of the high concentration of nutrients, especially nitrogen, with the seeds. In conclusion, the seed coating with organomineral fertilizer was a potentially developed method to improve farming efficiency. Further efforts were needed to fix the composition of organomineral fertilizer, especially the type N substances used and the steps of applying the materials onto the seeds.