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Potential of termite mounds and its surrounding soils as soil amendments in smallholder farms in central Uganda

OBJECTIVES: The low fertility of highly weathered soils has been a major problem for resource-constrained smallholder farmers. In central Uganda, smallholder farmers have been collecting termite mound soils anywhere around the termite mound to improve their soil fertility. However, no studies have b...

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Autores principales: Apori, Samuel Obeng, Murongo, Marius, Hanyabui, Emmanuel, Atiah, Kofi, Byalebeka, John
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457291/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32854759
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13104-020-05236-6
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author Apori, Samuel Obeng
Murongo, Marius
Hanyabui, Emmanuel
Atiah, Kofi
Byalebeka, John
author_facet Apori, Samuel Obeng
Murongo, Marius
Hanyabui, Emmanuel
Atiah, Kofi
Byalebeka, John
author_sort Apori, Samuel Obeng
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVES: The low fertility of highly weathered soils has been a major problem for resource-constrained smallholder farmers. In central Uganda, smallholder farmers have been collecting termite mound soils anywhere around the termite mound to improve their soil fertility. However, no studies have been conducted on which sections of the termite mounds consist of high soil nutrients. This study was conducted to assess selected major soil essential plant nutrients of soils collected from the top of the mound (TPMS), and the basal part of the mound (BPMS). The surrounding soil samples were collected from five, fifteen, and thirty meters away from the mound (TMSS1, TMSS2, and TMSS3 respectively), covering ten termite mounds in five different maize fields in central Uganda. RESULTS: TPMS and BPMS had significant (P-value < 0.05) higher N, P, K, OC, Ca and Mg levels than TMSS1, TMSS2, and TMSS3. However, OC levels in BPMS was higher than TPMS. On the whole, termite mounds are beneficial as a source for essential plant nutrients. It will be best if smallholder farmers could collect the termite mound soils from the top and the basal part of the mound to improve the fertility of their soil.
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spelling pubmed-74572912020-08-31 Potential of termite mounds and its surrounding soils as soil amendments in smallholder farms in central Uganda Apori, Samuel Obeng Murongo, Marius Hanyabui, Emmanuel Atiah, Kofi Byalebeka, John BMC Res Notes Research Note OBJECTIVES: The low fertility of highly weathered soils has been a major problem for resource-constrained smallholder farmers. In central Uganda, smallholder farmers have been collecting termite mound soils anywhere around the termite mound to improve their soil fertility. However, no studies have been conducted on which sections of the termite mounds consist of high soil nutrients. This study was conducted to assess selected major soil essential plant nutrients of soils collected from the top of the mound (TPMS), and the basal part of the mound (BPMS). The surrounding soil samples were collected from five, fifteen, and thirty meters away from the mound (TMSS1, TMSS2, and TMSS3 respectively), covering ten termite mounds in five different maize fields in central Uganda. RESULTS: TPMS and BPMS had significant (P-value < 0.05) higher N, P, K, OC, Ca and Mg levels than TMSS1, TMSS2, and TMSS3. However, OC levels in BPMS was higher than TPMS. On the whole, termite mounds are beneficial as a source for essential plant nutrients. It will be best if smallholder farmers could collect the termite mound soils from the top and the basal part of the mound to improve the fertility of their soil. BioMed Central 2020-08-27 /pmc/articles/PMC7457291/ /pubmed/32854759 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13104-020-05236-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Note
Apori, Samuel Obeng
Murongo, Marius
Hanyabui, Emmanuel
Atiah, Kofi
Byalebeka, John
Potential of termite mounds and its surrounding soils as soil amendments in smallholder farms in central Uganda
title Potential of termite mounds and its surrounding soils as soil amendments in smallholder farms in central Uganda
title_full Potential of termite mounds and its surrounding soils as soil amendments in smallholder farms in central Uganda
title_fullStr Potential of termite mounds and its surrounding soils as soil amendments in smallholder farms in central Uganda
title_full_unstemmed Potential of termite mounds and its surrounding soils as soil amendments in smallholder farms in central Uganda
title_short Potential of termite mounds and its surrounding soils as soil amendments in smallholder farms in central Uganda
title_sort potential of termite mounds and its surrounding soils as soil amendments in smallholder farms in central uganda
topic Research Note
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457291/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32854759
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13104-020-05236-6
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