Abstract:
Durum wheat is one of the major cereal crops produced in East Shewa Zone, Oromia Regional state for the purpose of both home consumption and market. However, its productivity is low due to low availability of soil nutrients. Therefore, field experiment was carried out in 2020–2021 cropping seasons using different organic fertilizer sources as a supplement to the recommended NPSZnB blend fertilizes to see the effect on soil properties and on the productivity of durum wheat. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design as one factor arrangement and replicated three times per treatment. The post-harvest soil analytical result showed insignificant (P>0.05) influence of the fertilizers on soil properties. Analysis of the results revealed that, plant height (PH), spike length (SL), effective tiller number (ETN), harvest index (HI), thousand kernels weight, aboveground biomass yield (AGBY), grain yield (GY), and straw yield (SY) were significantly (p < 0.05) affected by the organic and NPSZnB fertilizers. However, days to heading and days to maturity were not significantly (p > 0.05) affected by the organic and NPSZnB fertilizer application. The highest, AGBY (11930 kg ha−1), and SY (6350.9 kg ha−1) were recorded with the application of T7 and also the highest, SL (5.2cm), ETN (3), and GY (5579 kg ha−1) were obtained with the application of T7. The highest net benefits (NB) of birr 123806.6 with acceptable marginal rate of return (MRR 2765.948%) was achieved from the combined application of NPSZnB (200kg/ha) + 1.85t /ha v/compost + urea (50kg/ha). All the other treatment combinations except T2, T3, and T6 gave low net benefit with non-acceptable MRR. Thus, the supplement of recommended NPSZnB with organic amendments is very important with the most economically productive treatment combination for small scale farmers with higher benefit return was from the application of 200 kg/ha NPSZnB + 1.85t /ha v/compost + urea (50kg/ha).
