Effect of Five Organic Soil Amendments on Meloidogyne Incognita Infecting Tomato Plants under Greenhouse Conditions

A pot experiment was conducted in order to study the impact of time application of four animal manures i.e. chicken, horse, farm-yard and pigeon manures and town refuse added separately either pre or post planting treatments comparing to oxamyl on tomato plant cv. Castle Rock infected with M. incognita under greenhouse conditions (25±3oC). Results revealed that all tested materials clearly enhanced plant growth characters to great degree and reduce gall and eggmass numbers. Plant receiving pigeon manure as pre-planting or post planting applications at the level of 5g/plant obviously surpassed other tested animal manures and town refuse in the increment values of plant length (85.7 and 71.4%), total plant fresh weight (66.4 and 37.9%) number of flowers (100 and 100%), fruits (300 and 400%), and branches/plant(100 and 300%) and shoot dry weight (42.9 and 38.1%), as well as achieved the highest reduction percentage for number of root galls(89.1 and 81.5 %), eggmasses (90 and 84.2%), for pre or post planting applications, respectively followed by farm-yard manure where as chicken treatment as a pre-planting soil amendments exhibited the lesser values in this respect. All treatments obviously gave sizeable percentage increase values of nitrogen (N), phosphorus(P), potassium(K), organic matter(O.M), and organic carbon(O.C) in leaves of tomato plant. The pigeon or chicken manures showed also very narrow C/N ratio (12.6:1) or (14.3:1), respectively, in this work. Among the tested materials, pigeon manure ranked first in percentage increase values of chemical components of leaves as pre-planting application, whereas chicken manure showed this position as post-planting treatment.