Amendment of Soil Water Retention and Nutrients Holding Capacity by Using Sugar Cane Bagasse

Abstract

Sugarcane bagasse (SCB)is byproduct of sugarcane industry can be used as soil amendments to improve soil hydro, physical-chemical characteristics. It also provides reasonable economic means to recycle these in an environmentally friendly manner. The soil samples were studied for different soil characteristics collected from different sites of Dodoma city, Tanzania. Soil sample with poor water holding capacity selected and made into six treatments by different percentages of sugarcane bagasse 0, 2, 5, 10,20 and 100% in triplicates for each treatment. The result showed that the water holding capacity of the soil increased from 26.85 to 84.08 % representing 3.16 times.The soil of Dodoma have low organic matter (438.6 - 1126.6 mg/kg), and deficient in K+ (0.5 cmol/kg), Ca2+ (2.8 cmol/kg), Mg2+ (1.3 mg /kg), Na+ (1.03 cmol/kg) and cation exchange capacity (5 cmol/kg). The available K+, Ca2+, Mg2+ contents of soil increased by 13.87, 22.79, 33.13 and 43.61% with the application of 2, 5, 10 and 20 % of sugarcane bagasse, respectively. Different levels of SCB positively influence the hydro, physico-chemical properties of soil. Utilization of SCB as organic fertilizer was found to save the water cost and chemical fertilizer along with minimizing environmental pollution. Application of 10% of sugarcane bagasse was found to be the standard dose to achieve important hydo, physicochemical properties of soil to a required level.