Abstract
The experiment was carried out to study the effects of soil compaction in pot by packing soil into pot at the beginning of raising seedlings on the growth of seedlings and their subsequent yield in eggplant and sweet pepper.
(1) SmallerS/Rvalue with high dry weight were found in the seedlings grown in pot incompactly filled with soil only or 1 soil: 1 bark compost (v/v) than those grown in compact media in both eggplant and sweet pepper. However incompact packing of bark compost into pot inhibited growth of seedlings in egg-plant, but not in sweet pepper. Incompact media promoted the partitioning of dry matter to root and reduced to stem, resulting in a smallerS/Rvalue.
(2) Plants from seedlings grown in incompact packing pot developed better, showing a deeper and wider root system consisting in a lot of thick roots over 1 mm in diameter after transplanting, produced more yield than those grown in compact packing pot with all of 3 media for sweet pepper, with soil only or 1 soil: 1 bark compost media for eggplant. Bark compost media inhibited growth of seedlings, resulted in less yield than other two media.
(3) Seedlings with larger leaf area and smallerS/Rvalue at transplanting time showed the vigorous growth with a higher yield than those with a largerS/Rvalue or a smallerS/Rvalue with little leaf area. LargerS/Rvalue was not favorable for increasing the yield in both eggplant and sweet pepper.
(4) In eggplant, the yield was closely correlated to the number of thick roots over 1 mm in diameter. The more the number of thick roots, the higher the yield. Similar result also was obtained in sweet pepper.
(5) It may be concluded that keeping soil loosely is very important during the period of raising seedlings in eggplant and sweet pepper.
