Phosphorous Application Comparison Between Organic Fertilizers And Swine Manure In The High Country

In the High Country, due to soils being deficient in phosphorus, people predominately lean toward utilizing organic fertilizers to supply additional nutrients to their crops (Boylan, R. personal communication, Oct 16, 2019). As a result, this research seeks to compare two commonly used fertilizers to hog manure in order to find which source supplies the most phosphorus. Hog manure is used as a source of fertilizer due to the high amounts of phosphorus that the waste contains. The reason for this is because swine are unable to break down phytate that is found in phosphorus due to not having an abundance of the phytase enzyme (Joern and Sutton, 2019). Phosphorus being a cheap additive, is also added in hog diets in large quantities, which results in large quantities of phosphorus in their manure (Joern and Sutton, 2019). The three treatments, along with a control group, were randomly assigned to a 10 ft by 10 ft plot, with 16 total plots. Over the course of a six-month timeline after the treatments were applied soil tests were conducted at two periods. The first soil test was taken at the halfway mark at three months and again at the end of the six-month period. The plots that had swine manure (A) applied did increase the phosphorus index of the soil and had the highest index compared to bone meal and rock phosphate. But with an unexpected increase in the phosphorus index in two of the control plots (B1 and B2), other factors such as leaching, and slope could have impacted the uptake of phosphorus. From this research the importance and limitations of on farm research is emphasized, as well as the significance of proper soil and waste management.