Productive Behavior of Sabila Crop (Aloe vera barbadensis) with Bovine Manure Application

The agricultural area of Caborca, Sonora in the Sonoran Desert is characterized by the water shortage, and grounds with majority sandy soil and with little or null organic matter content, reason why they retain little humidity. The Sabila (Aloe) plant is considered a strategist crop for the arid and semi-arid lands from Mexico country, because it can be a high water efficiency crop, due to it has low water requirements, and at the moment this are developing satisfactorily although on experimental scale in this area, in the other hand, in this area, cattle as much for meat as for milk, is an important activity, derivate of which, great volumes of bovine manure take place, and those require to disperse or finally becoming a contamination problem. On the INIFAP research center in Caborca, Sonora, in an aloe plantation established during summer of 2002, with a plant density of 15,000 plant.ha^-1 in which, by several years was evaluated the bovine manure effects on soil and aloe plant, a new application was made on may 2006 (20 t.ha^-1), to evaluate its effect on productive behavior. On December, 2006, we harvest the mature leaf of plant, and we count the leaf number, measure the leaf weight, and the yield of aloe leaf. The results indicate an increase in both, number (7.4 %) and weight (14.1 %) of leaf, for a yield increase of 21.5 %, due to bovine manure effect. At this harvest, the plots with bovine manure produced 129467 leaf. ha^-1, those weight 594 gr.leaf^-1 for a yield of 76.5 t.ha^-1