Efficacy of Compost of Different Plant Materials for the Management of Meloidogyne Incognita on Solanum lycopersicum L.

Screen house experiment was conducted to compare the effects of three different plants residue compost (rice husk (RHC), saw dust (SKC) and groundnut shell (GSC) composts) in the management of M. incognita on tomato. After 90 days of partial compost formation, 10 L capacity plastic buckets were filled with heat sterilized soil and treated with these compost at the rates of 10, 20 and 30 t/ha. Neem seed cake and Furadan (3G) were used as checks and where applied according to manufacturers recommendations, while untreated soil served as control. Four weeks tomato seedlings were transplanted into these buckets. A week later, each plant was inoculated with 10,000 eggs of M. incognita and each treatment was repeated four times arranged in a completely randomized design (CRD) on slap in screen house. Data on plant growth were taken at weekly intervals which include shoot length, number of leaves, stem diameter and number of days to flowering up till the ninth week after inoculation and data on nematode population index was taken at ninth week including nematodes number per 500 cm 3 , number of egg masses and number of galls per gram of roots and root galling index. These set up was repeated in a second experiment. All data collected were subjected to analysis of variance, (ANOVA). Were significant difference exist means were separated with New Duncan Multiple Range Test (NDMRT) at 5% level of significant. All composts gave significant increased in shoot length, number of leaves and stem diameter compared to control in both experiment 1 and 2 but RHC was significantly higher than all. The nematode population indices were consistently reduced only by RHC except the root galling index which was not reduced by either of the composts compared to the control. Composting with RHC will significantly reduce nematodes and enhance growth of tomato; however this composting technique may be inadequate for the other composts used in this experiment.