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Determination of the Concentration of Nutrients Limiting Wheat Production in Ololulunga in Narok County, Kenya

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Author Affiliations

  • 1Department of Chemistry, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, P.O Box 6200-00200, Nairobi, KENYA
  • 2 Department of Chemistry, Maasai Mara University, P.O. Box 861-020500, Narok, KENYA
  • 3 Department of Biochemistry, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, P.O Box 6200-00200 Nairobi, KENYA

Int. Res. J. Earth Sci., Volume 2, Issue (9), Pages 22-26, October,25 (2014)

Abstract

The drive for targeting higher agricultural production needs a balanced use of nutrients which otherwise create problems of soil fertility exhaustion and nutrient imbalances. The current research sampled 15 farms from Ololulunga, Narok County to determine the levels of nitrate, phosphate and sulfate using UV-VIS and data analyzed using MSTAT-C, SPSS and student t-test. The nitrate concentration varied from 32.441mg/kg to 11.108mg/kg before planting and 36.759mg/kg to 21.646mg/kg after planting. The phosphate concentration varied from 3.001mg/kg to 0.368mg/kg before planting and 9.508 mg/kg to 2.357mg/kg after planting. The sulfates concentration varied from 6.678mg/kg to 3.661mg/kg before planting and 8.028 mg/kg to 4.111 mg/kg after planting. Generally, it was observed that almost all farms had different application rates of these nutrients and maybe this depended on the financial ability of individual farmer. It was found that nitrate had the least CV% of 6.71, sulfates, 8.54% and phosphates 40.88 % and the nutrients before and after planting were significant (p 0.05).

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