EFFECTS OF ORGANIC FERTILIZERS ON GROWTH AND YIELD ...

4.7 Discussion
Mint plants are one of the most interesting research plants; they are between medicinal and
aromatic plants. There is a numerous research on mint, however, only few reports are available
on local environmental conditions (Aflatuni et al. 1999 a). Several mint species, origins and
cultivars are cultivated around the world, but in this study only Mentha piperita..
Many studies have reported the increase of yield with liming (Shukla et al. 1997, 1998, Ernani et
al. 2002). In which the highest yield was achieved after the third year of liming with the liming
of 4 or 8 t ha-1 (soil pH 6–6.5) in fine sand .The average yield for three years shows that liming
with 4 t ha-1 gave almost the same yield as with 8 and 12 t ha-1.
Matusiewicz (1972) studied peppermint of the Mitcham variety in five combinations of soil pH,
ranging from 4.7 to 6.9 for 3 years. He concluded that the plants developed best and gave the
highest crop of plant material at soil pH ranging from 5.6 to 6.2. However this study shows the
effect of organic fertilizers on the growth and yield of Mintha piperita on soil of pH 6.8. From
this study it was observed that Application of organic fertilizers such as organomineral and
tithonia base compost fertilizer increased the growth parametars of Mint ( Mentha piperita) in
terms of number of leaves, vine length, number of tendrils, as well as the fresh and dry weight.
Such promoting effect was maximal with the application of 500g organomineral fertilizer with
respect to the number of leaves, number of tendrils and the dry weight as compared with other
application rates. Similarly, application of 2kg tithonia base compost fertilizer gave the highest
effect with respect to vine length. Thus the application of 500g organomineral fertilizer result in
positive impact on the biomass production of Mentha piperita. 1kg tithonia base compost and