Response of bread wheat to different levels of Urea and NPS fertilizer on Andosols, Dugda, Ethiopia

The response of bread wheat to different rates of NPS fertilizer on at Dugda for two years on farmers field was conducted to determine optimum blended fertilizer rate and asses economic feasibility of different blend fertilizers rate for bread wheat. There was no significant difference observed to the different rates of Urea and NPS fertilizers applied when analyzed separately. However, the over location analysis (off all farmers) showed that the grain yield of wheat was significantly affected by the application of different rates of urea and NPS fertilizers. Hence the maximum grain yield of wheat was obtained at the maximum application of 300 kg of urea and 250 kg ha-1of NPS (4341.2kg/ha) over location. The application of 100kg/ha urea+200kg/ha NPS, 100kg/ha urea+250kg/ha NPS, 200kg/ha urea+150kg/ha NPS under balanced fertilization rates were significantly high yield as compared to the agronomic control at P< 0.05 level. Other traits like TKW and above ground biomass was not affected by the application of different rates of Urea and NPS fertilizers. The lowest grain yield of wheat was observed from the plot with no externally applied fertilizer. The application of 138Nkg and 95P2O5 kg ha-1fertilizers provided the highest net benefit (69,590.7 ETB ha-1) with a marginal rate of the return (MRR) of 120.51 %. However, the application of 46Nkg and 38P2O5kg ha-1 fertilizers provided the highest MRR of 563% with (60,538.3 ETB ha-1). These results are greater than the minimum acceptable rate of return (MARR) =100 (CIMMYT, 1988) (Table 4). Hence, for each birr invested in the production of wheat, the farmers could earn birr 1.2 and 5.63 after recovering their cost of production, and these treatments were significantly higher than the agronomic control at P< 0.05. DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/16-2-03 Publication date: July 30th 2025