The effect of irrigation with dual-purpose agricultural pond (fish farming) with consumption of livestock and chemical fertilizers on watermelon yield of Niagara cultivar

Abstract Limited water resources in the country and the need for healthy protein have increased the attention to the multipurpose use of water resources as well as fish production to meet the needs of the human and the economic power of farmers. In addition, the waste products of fish metabolism are very useful fertilizer for agricultural products. To investigate the effects of irrigation with dual-purpose ponds with the use of fertilizer on quantitative parameters of watermelon cultivar Niagara, an experiment was carried out with 4 treatments with 10 replications Treatments were included : T1 - Irrigation with dual-purpose agricultural pond and nano-fertilizer T2 - Irrigation with dual-purpose agricultural ponds T3 - Irrigation with dual-purpose agricultural pool and cattle manure with Tipper T4 - Dualpurpose agricultural ponds and poultry fertilizer. results showed that the effect of treatments on fruit weight, fruit size, number of fruits per plant and watermelon yield was significant. There was no difference between fruit number and fruit weight between T3 and T4 treatments, however, T4 treatment had about 20% more fruit yield than T3, which was not significant. In T3 treatment, the skin thickness of the fruit was more than T4 treatment, but they did not show any difference in flesh fruit density. The control treatment (T2) with the lowest number of fruits and fruit size had a lower yield than all other treatments. The higher yield of T1 treatment compared to T4 and T3 was due to higher fruit weight in T1 treatment than the other two treatments and the number of fruits per plant was the similar. The results of this study suggest irrigation of watermelon farms with water output from fish ponds along with the principled use of livestock and chemical fertilizers based on case studies