ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF LETTUCE FERTILIZED WITH BIOMASS OF Calotropis procera IN TWO GROWING SEASONS

Abstract

Vegetable production is an impactful activity, characterized by intensive land use, high input demand, and it requires strategic management adoption, especially in sustainable production systems, where the pillars of sustainability (environmental, social and economic) must be respected. In this sense, the objective of this work was to evaluate economic indicators of lettuce production using Caatinga spontaneous species (Calotropis procera: rooster tree) as fertilizer and cultivated in two seasons (spring and fall-winter) in the municipality of Serra Talhada, PE. The experimental design was in randomized blocks, arranged in a 4 x 4 factorial scheme, with three replications. The first factor was the biomass amounts of green manure (5.4, 8.8, 12.2 and 15.6 t ha-1 on a dry basis); and the second was their incorporation times in the soil (0, 10, 20 and 30 days before lettuce transplanting). The green mass yield, production costs, rate of return, and net profit margin were determined. The amount 15.6 t ha-1 of C. procera allowed higher profitability to the organic production of lettuce, and it is considered ideal to incorporate the green manure 11 (spring) and 15 (fall-winter) days before transplanting the vegetable. The spring crop promoted a superior economic return to the fall-winter planting, demonstrating economic viability even in the smallest amount of C. procera.

Yield and Profitability of Organic Radish Cultivation with Different between-Row Spacings

“…4). The high yield, the short production cycle boosted by favorable growth factors (soil, climate, and planting density), and the price higher than the mean production cost provided high interest rates, e.g., the 69.0% with carrot cultivation [24], 59.1% with cilantro [25], and 75% with lettuce [26]. , respectively, at the density of 316.67 plants m -2 (Fig.…”

ECONOMIC VIABILITY OF BEET CROPS USING Calotropis procera BIOMASS AS SOIL FERTILIZER IN TWO GROWING SEASONS1

“…] stand out due to their availability, ease of obtaining, high fresh mass production, and high N contents (BATISTA et al, 2016). Some studies have been conducted using these species, which have shown good results as soil fertilizers for leafy and root vegetables and increased commercial yields for single crops (GÓES et al, 2011;SILVA et al, 2011;BEZERRA NETO et al, 2014;OLIVEIRA et al, 2015a;SOUZA et al, 2016;SOUZA et al, 2017;SILVA et al, 2017;SOUZA et al, 2019;NUNES et al, 2020) and intercrops (ALMEIDA et al, 2015;OLIVEIRA et al, 2015b;BEZERRA NETO et al, 2019).…”