Produção de flor-de-seda Calotropis procera (Ait.) no semiárido nordestino com adubação orgânica e diferentes espaçamentos.

Abstract

Water scarcity makes it difficult to produce forage crops for animal feed in the Northeast region of Brazil. As a result, many producers become hostages to the trade in concentrated feed, which increases production costs. Therefore, the production of Calotropis procera (Ait) can be considered for use as a low-cost animal feed alternative. Therefore, the work aims to produce Silk Flowers in the municipality of Pombal-PB, with and without organic fertilization and under two spacings. The seeds were extracted by collecting ripe fruits that were beginning to open in the natural process of dispersal. The treatments consist of two types of fertilization (cattle manure and no fertilization) and two types of spacing (1.0 m between plants x 1.0 m between rows and 1.0 m between plants x 0.5 m between rows). After preparing the area, sowing was carried out and irrigation occurred through a drip system. During the conduction, the following evaluations were carried out: Plant length, Number of leaves per plant, Stem diameter, Fresh weight, Dry weight and Bromatological analysis. The experimental design used will be randomized blocks, in a 2x2 factorial scheme (fertilization x spacing) with six replications and the data will be subjected to analysis using the Sisvar software. In this way, it was possible to observe that there was an interaction between the sources of spacing variation and the use or not of manure in fertilizing plants, both in growth and development and in bromatological variables. The development of silk flower plants was more favorable when cultivated in a spacing with greater distance between rows (1.0 x 1.5 m) and the use of cattle manure did not present much advantage in relation to the other treatments, demonstrating that the silk flower can develop satisfactorily even without fertilization.