DOI: 10.36347/sjavs.2014.v01i01.002

Pages: 6-12

Organic food production, a dynamic, rapidly growing global activity is still new to Kuwait. Therefore, investigations were conducted during 2006-10 to develop a package of cultivation practices for producing organic greenhouse vegetables under Kuwait’s environmental conditions. One of the objectives of these investigations was to select a suitable growing substrate for organic greenhouse vegetable production. Locally formulated growing substrates containing various combinations of vermicompost, cocopeat, sphagnum peat moss, perlite, farmyard manure and Avicumus® were compared with two ready-to-use commercial organic substrates (Intervale®, Fortlite®, Dirtworks, USA) in tomato, cucumber, capsicum, lettuce and cauliflower under greenhouse conditions. Vegetative growth parameters (average plant height, number of leaves, chlorophyll index), and crop yield per plant were used to evaluate various growing substrates and compared with a conventional soil based production system. Overall, substrates containing vermicompost, cocopeat, perlite and sphagnum peat moss (2:1:1:1 or 1:1:1:1 v/v) produced growth, yield and fruit quality at least similar to or in some cases better than the ready-to-use commercial mixes studied in these experiments. The yields were 20 to 80% higher in tomato, cucumber, capsicum, cauliflower and carrot compared to the soil-based growing system. In lettuce, the soil-based production system was better than all of the organic substrates studied. These results along with net returns earned are presented in this paper to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of using locally-formulated growing substrates for producing organic greenhouse vegetables in Kuwait.