Abstract
Chickpea is one of the most important staple pulse crops in Ethiopia. However, its growth is constrained by a number of problems out of which fertilizer rates and varieties are the most important ones. Therefore, a field experiment was conducted in 2016 cropping season to determine the effect of phosphorus fertilizer levels on growth and root character of chickpea varieties at Ejersa Lafo district, central Ethiopia. Treatments consisted of four chickpea varieties (Dalota, Teketay, Natoli and Local check) and four phosphorus rates (0, 23, 46 and 69 kg P 2 O 5 ha -1 ) arranged in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The results revealed that main effect of both phosphorus rates and varieties were highly significant (P<0.001) on plant height, number of primary branches, number of secondary branches, root length and number of pods per plant. Significantly higher number of primary branches plant- 1 (5.37) was obtained from Teketay variety, higher root (14.33) and number of nodules plan-1(62.48) were obtained from Natoli variety and higher plant height (51.02) and number of secondary branches plant- 1 (14.58) were obtained from local variety with application of 46 kg P 2 O 5 ha -1 .Therefor, application of phosphorus at the rate of 46kg P 2 O 5 ha- 1 was recommended for higher growth and root character of chickpea at study area. Keywords : Chickpea, Phosphorus levels, Growth and Root character DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/11-13-04 Publication date: July 31 st 2020
Highlights
Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an important pulse crop cultivated and consumed across the world
In Africa, chickpea is widely grown in Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi (Bejiga and Maesen, 2006)
During 2016/17 Ethiopia produced 499,925.55 ton of chickpea from an area of 242,703.3 ha with average productivity of 2.06 ton ha-1 (CSA, 2017) which is less than half of the global chickpea production potential (5 ton ha-1)
Summary
Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an important pulse crop cultivated and consumed across the world. In Ethiopia chickpea is an important staple pulse crop and leads in production and area under cultivation next to faba bean and haricot bean (CSA, 2017). It is grown in several regions of the country with residual moisture on black vertisol soils (Kassie et al, 2009). Chickpea is produced for different purposes including food and feed, cash and foreign currency earning In addition to these it served as a break crop since it improves soil fertility through biological nitrogen fixation. Even though there is no research recommendation on fertilizer application for chickpea production in the study area, farmers grows chickpea on marginal lands using local varieties with little fertilizer application
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