INTEGRATING AGRICULTURE WITH AQUACULTURE: ROLE OF FISH SPECIES AND POND MUDS ON GROWTH, YIELD, AND NUTRITIONAL QUALITY OF SNAKE GOURD AND INDIAN SPINACH

Md Ashraful Islam*, Nusrat Jahan, Khandaker Anisul Huq, Shahroz Mahean Haque,
Md Abdul Wahab, Russell Borski and Hillary Egna
Email: ashrafulmi@bau.edu.bd
Department of Horticulture, Bangladesh Agriculture University (BAU), Bangladesh
 

Integrated farming is becoming imperative for the sustainable production of plants and animals in a manner that is both cost-effective and environmentally friendly. One example is the use of fish farm ponds to grow various vegetables. We showed in a separate experiment that the use of fertilizers in gher farming systems increases fish production by enhancing the growth of natural food sources, thus supplementing formulated feed provided by the farmers. In turn, the combination of fertilizer and feed results in a build-up of organic matter and other nutrients in the pond sediment which could be applied to pond dykes to improve the quality of the soil used for growing vegetables. The country of Bangladesh is currently experiencing a large fertilizer deficit and thus the costs associated with growing crops have risen substantially. As such, the use of pond muds could reduce costs while simultaneously increasing crop yields. The aim of the present study was to investigate the use of pond sediments from different fish culture systems on the growth, yield, and nutritional quality of snake gourd and indian spinach.  

We examined the effect of using 0 (M1), 50(M2), or 100% (M3) pond mud from three different aquaculture systems where either prawn and carp (P1), prawn and Mola (P2), or all three (P3) were grown together to cultivate snake gourd and indian spinach. The use of 100% pond mud provided the greatest yield of both indian spinach (Table 1) and snake gourd (Table 2), regardless of what species were grown within the pond. However, gourd yield was typically higher in P3 while spinach yield was greatest in P1. Variations in nutritional content (Ca, P, Fe, S, and vitamins A and C) of vegetables were also observed, although it was not consistently greater within any one treatment. These results indicate that pond muds are a viable alternative to fertilizers and could help to increase crop yields while mitigating agricultural costs for Bangladeshi farmers.