Effects of Arbuscular Mycorrhiza Fungi (Glomus mossae) and Compost on Early Growth Performance of Parkia biglobosa

One of the biggest challenges to sustainable global food security is the need to find suitable replacements for inorganic fertilizer. This is because inorganic fertilizers production consumes an increasing proportion of the global energy budget and the supply of key raw materials, primarily phosphorus is becoming more limited. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the effect of Arbuscular Mycorrhiza Fungi, AMF (Glomus mossae) and compost on soil properties and early growth response of Parkia biglobosa. The experiment was set up at the screen house of the Department of Bioscience, Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria. The experimental design was a 2 x 5 factorial, laid in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with four replicates. The treatments used were compost at five (5) levels: 10t/ha, 20t/ha, 30t/ha, 40t/ha, no amendments; and two (2) levels of AMF inoculation (with and without). Data on plant height, number of leaves, collar diameter and dry matter yields were generated and subjected to analysis of variance, and significant means were separated using Duncan’s Multiple Range Test at 5% level of significance. The result shows that mycorrhizal inoculation significantly increased (p< 0.05) plant height, stem diameter and leave numbers when compared with the non-mycorrhizal plants. There was no variation in number of leaves and height among the inoculated treatments as compared with the un-inoculated treatments which are significantly different from each other at -AMF 0 and –AMF 10 respectively. Interaction of AMF and compost at 40 t ha-1 had the highest plant height with a value of 35.06 cm. Application of 40 t ha-1 of compost with inoculation significantly increased (p< 0.05) the root dry matter yields while no significant differences were observed in leaves and stem dry matter yield for both inoculated and un-inoculated. The analysis of the soil before and after the experiments could also be comparable to one another as no variation was observed. From the results obtained, it can be concluded that AMF can successfully be inoculated into compost amended soil to improve the performance of Parkia biglobosa.