Determination of Inter Row Spacing and Seed Rate on Productivity of Finger Millet [Eleusine Coracana (L.) Gaertn.], At Jinka, Southern Ethiopia

Select Volume / Issue:

• Volume 1,Issue 3,May. 2014

Year:

2014

Type of Publication:

Article

Keywords:

Growth Parameters, Finger Millet, Inter Row Spacing, Phenological Parameters, Seed Rate, Yield Components, Yield

Authors:

Yoseph, Tekle

Journal:

IJRAS

Volume:

1

Number:

3

Pages:

172-176

Month:

May

ISSN:

2348-–3

Note:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Abstract:

A field experiment was undertaken at Jinka Agricultural Research Center to determine the effect of inter row spacing and seed rate on productivity of finger millet [Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn.], at Jinka. The experiment was conducted with four levels of inter row spacing (30, 45, 60 and 75 cm) and three levels of seed rate (5, 10 and 15 kg ha-1). The treatments were arranged factorially and laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Phenological and growth parameters such as yield and yield components, total biomass and harvest index were studied. The result showed that all phenological and growth parameters except finger length per plant were significantly affected by inter row spacing. As the inter row spacing wider there was increment on both plant height and tiller number per plant. Grain yield, 1000 seeds weight, total biomass and harvest index were very highly significantly affected by inter row spacing while number of fingers per ear was not significantly influenced by inter row spacing. The grain yield obtained from the inter row spacing of 45 cm (2.2488 t ha-1) was higher by 35.39% compared to the inter row spacing of 75 cm (1.4528 t ha-1). Seed rate had significantly affected all the growth and phenological parameters except days to maturity. The maximum number of tillers per plant and the highest finger length were noted from the seed rate of 5 kg ha-1. Seed rate had significantly affected yield components except number of fingers per ear. Seed rate had significant affected harvest index but it did not affect significantly total biomass. The highest grain yield (2.4693 t ha-1) and the highest harvest index (0.367), obtained from the seed rate of 10 kg ha-1 were 42.64% and 41.47% increase over the seed rate of 15 kg ha-1, respectively. There was significant interaction observed between inter row spacing and seed rate for all the studied parameters except number of fingers per ear. Therefore, it can be concluded from this result that the inter row spacing of 45 cm or the seed rate of 10 kg ha-1 is advisable and could be appropriate for finger millet production in the test area even though further testing is required to put the recommendation on a strong basis.

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