[01] Desalegn Negasa Soresa, Department of Plant Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, Wollega University, Shambu, Ethiopia. [02] Pichiah Gomathinayagam, Department of Plant Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, Wollega University, Shambu, Ethiopia.

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is an economically important wheat type in Ethiopia, encountering low yield due to minimum use of improved varieties, incidence of diseases, weeds, low soil fertility and lower rate of fertilizer application. Only nitrogen and phosphorous containing fertilizers have been used commonly. The use of economically feasible fertilizer recommendation including micronutrients with different varieties was not studied. Therefore, the study aimed at to identify the effect of blended fertilizers (NPSB) rates on yield and yield components of bread wheat cultivars. It was evaluated during the year 2016/2017 cropping season at Horro District, Western Ethiopia. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design with factorial arrangement in three replications and consisted of three blended fertilizers rate (which contain N, P, S and B) and 12 bread wheat cultivars including one standard check. The results revealed significant (P<0.05) main effect of genotypes. Among the yield related parameters genotype ETBW 7208 had the highest number of tillers per plant and productive tillers per square meter, with respect to kernel per spike and thousand kernel weight genotype ETBW 7264 was superior; moreover, genotype ETBW 7182 and ETBW7208 had the highest grain yield of 6.9 and 6.78 t ha^-1 respectively. In economic feasibility of the fertilizer over genotype combination, the lowest cost of production was recorded in the combination of all genotypes with blended fertilizers T₂ (100 kg NPSB with 100 kg Urea fertilizers) and a significance MRR obtained from the combination of ETBW 7252 with fertilizer T₃ (125kg blended fertilizer with 100kg of urea) as well as ETBW7182 with T₁ (blanket recommendation). In general, the effect of blended fertilizer was not significant on phenology, growth, yield components and grain yield of bread wheat, which might be due to the low level of difference in nutrient amount among treatments and their impact on quality as well as nutritional value needs investigation.

Blended Fertilizers, Interaction, Soil, Yield Component

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