Preliminary Investigation of Morphological Characteristics of Corn Grown in Soil with Spent Coffee Ground

Abstract

     Spent coffee grounds (SCG) could be volatilized through recycles. SCG has good characteristics to be recycled i.e. high porosity, good water absorption, remaining 2% (w/w) nitrogen etc. Therefore, SCG might has a potential for using as a substance to improve soil porosity or even fertilizer. However, many types of the other residual compounds still remain in SCG and some of them were reported about their toxicity to the plants and some kinds of microbe. The objective of this research was to investigate the effect of SCG on cultivating an economical crop. This experiment was conducted in Randomize Completely Block Design with 2 blocks. Five treatments e.g. soil, soil with bat guano, soil with SCG in 3 different ratios (1:1, 2:1 and 3:1), in which all SCG-mixing soil were left for 45 day-fermentation before tested. Six response variables were recorded e.g. plant height, leave area, leaf color score, field weight, ear weight and ear length. The results showed that growth rate of sweet corns grown in 1:1 soil and SCG was the worst comparing with those grown in the other types of planting materials. Furthermore, ANOVA and post-hoc analyses revealed that planting materials statistically affected leave area, leaf color score and field weight characteristics only, in which these 3 characteristics of sweet corn grown in soil with bat guano were highest among different planting materials (P<0.05). This experiment suggested that although fermentation step of planting material with SCG was carried out, the positive effect on promoting growth development was hard to observe in this experiment. Therefore, finding pre-treatment methods for eliminating toxic residues in SCG might address this issue and gain the benefits to agriculture for SCG recycle.