Effects of Chicken Manure and Shrimp Paste on Chili Pepper (Capsicum Frustescens) Growth

Chemical fertilizer application is one of the most common procedures in today's developing intensive agriculture. However, long-term use of chemical fertilizers has resulted in many unintended consequences such as environmental pollution including contribution of toxicity to the soil. Excessive toxicity of soil may prevent the growing of plants roots and containing low nutrients in plants. Previous study has proven that organic fertilizers may increase the plants growth and its soil quality. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the effects of chicken manure and shrimp paste application on chili pepper growth. This study used Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) as an experimental design. There were 4 treatments with 5 replications in this study. The treatments were supplied with: T1 (tap water); T2 (30 gram of chicken manure); T3 (30 mL of shrimp paste solution); T4 (15 gram of chicken manure and 15 mL of shrimp paste). The parameters that have been observed in this study were root length, shoot length, leaves number and soil pH. The data was analysed by using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and the differences between treatments mean were compared using Tukey test with significant level (P≤0.05). The results of this experiment showed that the chicken manure and shrimp paste solution had significant effects for all parameters measured except for soil pH value. All treatments were significantly higher compared to control. This study was conducted to provide more information as well as awareness to the agricultural industry and society to mainly use organic fertilizers in any cultivation of food product.