Investigating the effect of shade net housing and media type on carrot (daucus carota) germination · Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Author: Bamu, Norah T.
Title: Investigating the effect of shade net housing and media type on carrot (daucus carota) germination
Abstract: This research assessed the effects of different growing media (pine bark, maize compost, and soil) and environments (shade net and open field) on carrot (Daucus carota) growth and development in Zimbabwe. A split plot design with three replications was used. The growing environments were the main plots and the media types where the subplots. Interactions between the growing environment and the media type (p<0.001) were significant for all measured parameters. Pine bark under shade net conditions demonstrated superior performance across measured parameters reaching the highest germination rate (89.2 %), greatest plant height (45.6cm) as well as roots (28.6cm) and highest fresh weight (124.6g) g per plant. Maize compost showed intermediate performance for all measured parameter while soil (control) consistently had the lowest values. The shade net environment improved performance across all media types with average improvements of 15.2% in emergence, 18.4% in plant height and 22.6% in fresh weight compared to open field conditions. These findings led to the conclusion that the combination of pine bark media and shade net cultivation offers significant advantages for carrot production in Zimbabwe's growing conditions. It was recommended that farmers engaging in carrot production especially in semi-arid conditions should consider growing carrots in shade net houses and also that they use well-structured growing media such as pine bark or maize stover compost to boost output.
Date: August 2025
Publisher: BUSE
Keywords: Carrot production; Carrot germination
Supervisor: Mr Mutsengi

Item sets: Department of Crop Sciences

Media: Bamu - Crop Science.pdf