Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

POTENTIAL USE OF FLY ASH IN FLORICULTURE: A CASE STUDY ON THE PHOTOSYNTHETIC PIGMENTS CONTENT AND VEGETATIVE GROWTH OF TAGETES ERECTA (MARIGOLD)

Abanti Pradhan, Aditya Kishore Dash, Shakti Sourav Mohanty and Somen Das

Abstract

The present research was carried out to study the effect of fly ash on the growth and photosynthetic pigment content of Tagetes erecta and on soil physicochemical characteristics under pot culture. Four treatments of fly ash such as 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% were taken as experimental pots and only soil as control pot. Different photosynthetic parameters like chlorophyll-a, chlorophyll-b, total chlorophyll & carotenoid and physical parameters like total length of plant, root length and shoot length were studied from each culture pots on first day (0 day) up to 60 days at every 10 days interval. Photosynthetic pigments were found to be increased maximum in 10 % fly ash amended soil on 40th days of growth (chlorophyll-a, 1.594 mg/g, chlorophyll-b, 0.788 mg/g, total chlorophyll, 2.382 mg/g and carotenoid, 0.789 mg/g) followed by a decline trend up to the end of experiment. One way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test for chlorophyll- a, chlorophyll-b, total chlorophyll and carotenoid showed a significant difference between different concentrations of fly ash amendment (F=7.11, 10.6, 6.23 and 8.69 respectively at p< 0.05). Further, the physical parameters like root length, shoot length and total length of the plant also shows a similar trend of growth as the pigment content but was not significant. (F= 1.12, 1.6 and 1.0 at p< 0.05). The change in physicochemical parameters of soil such as pH, conductivity (μs/cm), moisture content (%), OC (g%), OM (g%), N (mg/kg), P (mg/kg), Cu (mg/kg), Zn (mg/kg), Fe (mg/kg), Cr (mg/kg) were also analyzed from each culture pot after the end of the experiment. It was observed that except N, P, K all other parameter increased with increase in fly ash amendment.