Corn cob ash eyed as alternative farm fertilizer

The Department of Agriculture is pushing for corn cob ash as an affordable alternative to commercial fertilizer amid efforts to ramp up production and go into exports.

To provide the initiative scientific basis, the DA’s Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) funded a research done by experts at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños (UPLB) to explore the potential of the corn cobs as alternative source of potassium fertilizer.

Over four planting season, the project evaluated the effectiveness of corn cobs and ashes derived from commercial corn dryers and farmer’s fields when used as source of potassium and determine the economics of using corn cobs and ash as substitute fertilizer for white corn.

Research activities were done in Isabela and Bukidnon—the two largest corn-producing provinces in the country—is collaboration with the Cagayan Valley Research Center and the Northern Mindanao Integrated Agricultural Research Center.

Results showed that the grain yield from plots that used commercial potassium and plots that used corn cobs showed no significant difference, according to the BAR.

Apolonio M. Ocampo, university researcher at the Crop Science Cluster of UPLB’s College of Agriculture, said in a statement that experiments also revealed that ash from corn cobs “gave the best result in terms of growth and biomass production as it has higher concentrated amount of potassium.”

Ocampo said that while using ash as fertilizer did not result in as much yield when using commercial fertilizer, this could still help decrease the cost of production considering that a hectare of corn consumes P1,800 worth of muriate of potash.

“Also, the application is easier as the farmer have to simply scatter in his corn field the corn cobs or ash during the land preparation,” he added.

Last month, the Department of Agriculture launched a high-tech, village-type corn processing facility in Tayabas City, Quezon, amid push for greater headway in the export market.

According to the DA, the P28.2-million, 5,000-square-meter grains hub would enable farmers in the area to produce high-quality corn at any time of the year and earn more profitably.

In 2013, national corn output reached 7.37 million metric tons to make the country “practically self-sufficient” in the commodity and an exporter with a trial shipment of corn silage to South Korea.

The agriculture chief has been pushing farmers of corn, a key ingredient in the manufacturing of animal feed, to ramp up their export activities.