Appropriate Central Composite Design for Manure Nutrients Application for Cucumber Yields in Akwa Ibom State

Abstract

Cucumber a popular creeper plant that produces a spherical shape and bright green colour fruits that are used as vegetables is among the profitable agribusiness in Southern Nigeria. This study models a response surface design that fits the cucumber nutrient requirements for specific optimal yield in Akwa Ibom State. The spherical central composite design was designed to have 33 experimental runs and with number of replications included. The variance of the fitted response at different levels of interest were kept constant. Nitrogen fertilizer, pig slurry, and vegimax folia were utilize as the independent variables. The application setting for nitrogen fertilizer, pig slurry and vegimax folia were 100 kg / ha, 10 kg/ha and 5 ml / 20 litres of water respectively. Study results revealed that nitrogen fertilizer and pig slurry in the main effect had a positive significant effect on cucumber yield at 95% level of significance (P-value = 0.000 < 0.05 and P-value = 0.000 < 0.05 respectively). From the result, it was seen that the model was adequate and also significant as the P-value = 0.001 < 0.05. About 91.30% of variation in the model can be accounted for by the variables. Finally, 167.09 kg/ha of nitrogen fertilizer, 87.27 kg/ha of pig slurry and 19.28 ml/20 litres of vegimax folia was found to be the optimum production conditions for the cucumber yield in Akwa Ibom State.