ASSESSING THE PRODUCTIVITY AND ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF USING SOME FERTILIZERS COMPLIANT WITH THE ORGANIC PRODUCTION SYSTEM IN OLIVE GROVE

This research was conducted during the period (2018 - 2020) at Hamah Agricultural Research Center in the west central of Syria, in the olive orchard planted with a local variety called “Kaisi”, in order to assess the impact of some organic practices in the productive traits of olive, especially that olive in Syria suffer from a decrease in productivity of unit area due to the lack of services provided to trees, or to repercussion of climate changes in the region.

The experimental orchard was divided into four plots: three of them were fertilized as organic treatments coding as follows: (T1: foliar application was applied with certified organic fertilizer its trade name “Amalgerol”, T2: we add fermented manure of free-bred sheep and green manure of vetch and barely plants, T3: in this plot, green manure and organic liquid fertilizer “Amalgerol” were added, whereas the forth plot T4: is a chemical treatment fertilized by NPK.

The productive indicators (one year shoot length, No. flowers, fruit set%, productivity kg/tree, fruit weight, pulp%, oil content%) were studied in the field and in the Olive Oil laboratory at General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research, and a study of costs and profit was also conducted for each experimental plot to find out the most feasible treatment.

The results showed that the values productive indicators were lowest in the chemical plot, and the compound treatments (T2, T3) were superior significantly, the differences became clearer in the second season due to the cumulative effect of added fertilizers.

The feasibility study confirmed that the compound treatments achieved the highest profit, especially T2 in which fertilizer can be obtained from the by-products of farm or from nearby ones.

This study demonstrated the response of olive trees to agricultural practices compatible with the organic system, with an increase of oil yield which allow producing organic olive oil, thus achieving new marketing opportunities and higher profits.