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EFFECT OF SEED PRIMING AND MICRO-DOSING OF FERTILIZER ON GROUNDNUT, SESAME AND COWPEA IN WESTERN SUDAN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2011

ABDELRAHMAN OUSMAN  and
JENS B. AUNE
ABDELRAHMAN OUSMAN
Affiliation:
Agricultural Research Corporation/Elobeid Research Station, P.O.Box 429, El-Obeid, Sudan
JENS B. AUNE*
Affiliation:
Department of International Environment and Development Studies, P.O. Box 5003, 1432 Aas, Norway
*
§Corresponding in author: [email protected]
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Summary

The effect of seed priming and micro-dosing in groundnut, cowpea and sesame was studied for three years in on-farm and on station experiments under rainfed agriculture in North Kordofan, Sudan. The on-station trials showed that seed priming increased groundnut pod and hay yields by 18% and 20% respectively. Micro-dosing of 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 g fertilizer per pocket increased groundnut pod yield across the three years by 36.7, 67.6 and 50.8% respectively compared to the control. The highest yield increases were consistently obtained when micro-dosing was combined with seed priming. A combination of seed priming and micro-dosing of 0.6 g increased groundnut yield by 106%. Priming alone did not significantly affect sesame seed or hay yield, but micro-dosing of 0.6 g per pocket increased the grain yield by 38% over the control. Cowpea grain yield in the on-station experiments was not significantly affected by seed priming or micro-dosing. However, both seed priming and micro-dosing increased cowpea hay yield. In the on-farm trials, seed priming increased groundnut and cowpea yields by 18.2 and 25.5% respectively, and seed priming combined with 0.3 g fertilizer increased their yields by 42.2 and 54.5% respectively compared to the control. For sesame the yield increase after 0.3 g fertilizer per pocket was 46.3%. The economic analyses of the on-station experiments showed that the highest gross margin was obtained when combining seed priming with 0.6 g micro-dosing for all the crops. These results show that the combination of micro-dosing and seed priming has the potential to increase productivity and improve net return in the crops tested.

Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Agriculture , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 431 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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