Use of Organic Fertilizers to Enhance Soil Fertility, Plant Growth, and Yield in a Tropical Environment

Abstract

Soils rarely have sufficient nutrient for crops to reach their potential yield. Applying organic fertilizers without prior knowledge of their properties may cause yield decline under low application or pollute the environment with excessive application. Under‐ standing the nutrient variability and release pattern of organic fertilizers is crucial to supply plants with sufficient nutrients to achieve optimum productivity, while also rebuilding soil fertility and ensuring protection of environmental and natural resour‐ ces. This chapter presents the authors’ experiences with different organic amend‐ ments under Hawaii's tropical conditions, rather than an intensive literature review. For meat and bone meal by‐products (tankage), batch‐to‐batch variability, nutrient content/ release pattern and quality, and plant growth response to the liquid fertilizer pro‐ duced from tankage were evaluated. For animal livestock, dairy manure (DM) and chicken manure (CM) quality, changes in soil properties, and crop biomass produc‐ tion and root distributions were evaluated. For seaweed, an established bio‐security protocol, nutrient, especially potassium (K) variability, and plant growth and yield response were evaluated in different tropical soils.