Abstract
The productivity of the faba bean has declined in Ethiopia, owing to poor management practices, such as blanket fertilisation. In 2018, a field experiment was conducted in a Nitisol soil during the main cropping season in Northwestern Ethiopia, to determine the amount of chemical fertiliser and Rhizobium inoculant to be used for the optimum yield within economic feasibility. The experiment consisted of a factorial combination of five rates of blended NPSZnB fertiliser (0, 60, 121, 180 and 240 kg ha−1) and three rates of inoculant (0, 500 and 750 g ha−1). Sole chemical fertilisation, as well as inoculation, individually produced a seed yield of 2.3–2.5 t ha−1, about 1.0–1.2 t ha−1 more than the control. However, the maximum seed yield (3.3 t ha−1) was recorded from the combined application of both the chemical fertiliser and the inoculant. The seed yield correlated closely with the number of active nodules (R2 = 0.78 **), suggesting a substantial contribution of symbiotic N2 fixation. Inoculation increased the N content of the seed yield by at least 30 kg ha−1. Chemical fertilisation, containing at least 44 kg ha−1 of mineral N does not appear to have an adverse effect on N2 fixation. The combined use of 180 kg ha−1 blended fertiliser with 750 g ha−1 inoculant, producing a maximum net profit of 72,918 birr ha−1 (EUR 2232), is recommended for the study area. This study emphasises that (1) inoculation alone can produce as much seed as the maximum rate of chemical fertilisation, but (2) the maximum yield was produced with a combined use of inoculant and chemical fertiliser, by promoting the vigour of the nodules and N2 fixation.
Highlights
The faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is a good source of protein, starch, cellulose and minerals, and is commonly used as human food in developing countries [1]
In the 2019/20 cropping season, about 467,000 ha of land was cultivated for faba bean in Ethiopia, and 1006,752 tonnes of grain were obtained, of which about one third was produced in the Amhara region [4]
The cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the soil was significantly low, and the CECclay, which was calculated to be 20.4 cmol(+) kg−1, was only half of what was reported in eight soils of the Farta district, central Ethiopia, which had an average clay content of
Summary
The faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is a good source of protein, starch, cellulose and minerals, and is commonly used as human food in developing countries [1]. In the 2019/20 cropping season, about 467,000 ha of land was cultivated for faba bean in Ethiopia, and 1006,752 tonnes of grain were obtained, of which about one third was produced in the Amhara region [4]. The productivity of faba beans in Ethiopia is very low—only 2.16 t ha−1 [4]—and even less than 1.0 ha−1 in the study area, which is the Dangla district in the Amhara region. These numbers are much lower than the average yield in the rest of the world, which is approximately 4.8 t ha−1 [5]. Most highlands of Ethiopia are deficient in major essential nutrients, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P)
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