Effect of NPS Fertilizer and Intra-row Spacing Effect on Growth, Yield and Yield Components of Chickpea Varieties Under Midland Conditions of Bale, South-eastern Ethiopia

Variety and location specific plant density recommendation is one of the agronomic practices used to increase the production and productivity of chickpea. However, there is a blanket recommendation across locations and varieties of chickpea in Ethiopia. Hence, Effects of blended NPS fertilizer rates and intra-row spacing on some agronomic traits of chickpea varieties were evaluated with the objective to find out the optimum amount of NPS fertilizer and intra-row spacing for chickpea production under midland conditions of Bale. The experiment was conducted using split plot design using chickpea varieties (ACOS Dubie and Habru) as main plots and NPS fertilizer rate and intra-row spacing as sub-plots with three replications. The main effect of variety showed significant effect on the number of days to mature, number of days to flower, plant height, biological and seed yield and hundred seed weight whereas, main effect of intra-row spacing did not show significant difference on all studied agronomic parameters. Similarly, main effect of blended NPS fertilizer rates did not reveal significant difference for the studied parameters. Blended NPS fertilizer rates utilized in the study areas did not show differences in most of studied traits. From this, it can be preliminarily concluded that reasonable intra-row spacing of 10 cm for both varieties of chickpea could be used for the studied areas.