Effect of Sewage Sludge and Palm Fiber Co-compost as horticultural substrate on Carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua) growth

Abstract

The palm (Phoenix dactylifera) is the main species of the main agro-systems of semi-arid and arid bioclimatic stages in Algeria. Its fibers (FP) are widely available and not used. In addition, the available sewage sludge (SS) requires recovery for ecological and economic purposes. To this end, the objective of this work was to formulate a Co-composting (CC) composed of SS and PF as a horticultural substrate (HS) intended for the breeding of the carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua). During the six months of CC, the indicative maturity pa-rameters such as pH, electro conductivity (EC), dissolved O2 and dry matter (DW) showed stability of the product. Four HS composed of 4 different CC-soil (TS) ratios: T (8-2), T (7-3), T (6-4) and T (0-10) were studied in the labor-atory. The best physicochemical characteristics such as total porosity (TP), humidity rate (RH), bulk density (BD), drainage rate (DR), pH and EC were obtained in T (80:20). This same SH also gave the best growth parameters of plants such as root volume (RV), root architecture (RA), number of roots (RN), root length (RL), number of leaves (LN), stem length (SL), fresh aerial and root weight (AFW), (RFW), dry aerial and root weight (ADW) and (RDW). We conclude that T (8: 2) induced the best growth performance of C. siliqua.