Development of a tool to apply chemical fertilizer for pineapple (Ananas Comosus) cultivation

Abstract

Pineapple (Ananas comosus) is a heavy feeder and needs more nutrients to get an optimum yield. Fertilizer application is problematic in all Pineapple cultivations mainly due to two reasons. On the one hand, there are spiny and pointed leaves and on the other hand, the place where fertilization needs to be applied. The fertilizer should be applied to the base of the leaves and is a laborious and annoying practice, especially when done manually in commercial cultivation. Therefore, there is a necessity to develop a convenient technique to facilitate the fertilizer application. Hence, an experiment was conducted at the University of Colombo Institute for AgroTechnology and Rural Sciences, Hambantota, Sri Lanka to develop a simple tool to apply chemical fertilizer at the base of Pineapple leaves. The tool was developed using PVC pipes, nuts, bolts, rubber bands, a spring and glue. All these items were assembled in an orderly manner to develop a smart and a simple tool to achieve the purpose. The height of the tool can be adjusted by changing the fertilizer loading component. A questionnaire survey was conducted among the pineapple cultivators to evaluate the usefulness of the tool. The weight, height, safety, efficiency, cost and overall acceptability were evaluated using a fivepoint Likert scale. Further, the developed tool was compared with manual fertilizer application to monitor the time taken to apply fertilizers and the labour cost using 20 pineapple plants at the same age. The independent sample T-test was used to test the significance at 5% level. The tool placed the recommended amount of fertilizer/plant in two pushes (5.1 ± 0.19g) and covered 20 plants with an efficiency of 326.84 ± 2.46%. And efficiency of the cost involvement of the tool was 305.84 ± 3.58%. The farmer responses indicated that the tool was a simple, portable, smart and userfriendly tool with more advantages.