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Productivity improvement of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) through crop rotation and organic matter application in degraded crop farms of Ethiopian highlands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2022

Getachew Alemayehu Open the ORCID record for Getachew Alemayehu [Opens in a new window] ,
Agegnehu Shibabaw ,
Enyew Adgo ,
Folkard Asch  and
Bernhard Freyer
Getachew Alemayehu*
Affiliation:
Department of Plant Sciences, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Bahir Dar University, P.O.Box 5501, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
Agegnehu Shibabaw
Affiliation:
Crop Research Program, Adet Agricultural Research Center, Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute, P.O.Box 527, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
Enyew Adgo
Affiliation:
Department of Natural Resource Management, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Bahir Dar University, P.O.Box 5501, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
Folkard Asch
Affiliation:
Hans-Ruthenberg-Institute of Agricultural Sciences in the Tropics, University of Hohenheim, Garbenstr. 13, D-70599 Stuttgart, Germany
Bernhard Freyer
Affiliation:
Department of Sustainable Agricultural Systems, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna (BOKU), Gregr-Mendel-Straße 33, 1180 Wien, Austria
*
Author for correspondence: Getachew Alemayehu, E-mail: getachew.64@gmail.com
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Abstract

Bread wheat is one of the most important staple crops in Ethiopia and it is largely produced by smallholder farmers in the highlands of the country. Its productivity is, however, very low below the world average mainly due to the dwindling of soil productivity and depletion of soil fertility as the result of complete removal of crop residues as well as abandoning of crop rotation and organic matter application. Hence, a 3 years experiment was conducted to study the productivity improvement of bread wheat through crop rotation and organic manure application in degraded crop fields of Ethiopian highlands. Both at station and on-farm sites, factorial combinations of five crop rotations (R1+ = bread wheat–clover–potato, R2+ = clover–bread wheat undersowing lupine–potato, R3+ = potato–clover–bread wheat, R4+ = bread wheat undersowing lupine–potato undersowing lupine–bread wheat and R5+ = lupine–potato undersowing lupine–bread wheat) and four manure application rates [M1 = control/without manure, M2 = 2.5 t ha−1 Sesbania green manure (SGM), M3 = 5 t ha−1 fresh cattle manure (FCM) and M4 = 2.5 t ha−1 SGM + 5 t ha−1 FCM] were laid out in a randomized complete block design with four replications. Crop rotation treatments with plus sign (+) indicated that crop residues and/or green manure of preceding crops were incorporated into the soil. Sole bread wheat crop (R1) without manure application (M1) in the first year (2013) was considered as the control and baseline of the study. Results of the study clearly showed that the interaction of R3+ and M4 in 3 years period (2013–2015) enabled to recover the highest grain productivity of bread wheat from 0.95 and 0.69 to 4.83 and 4.14 t ha−1 with the percentile increments of 408.42 and 500.00% at station and on-farm sites, respectively. Thus, long-term application of organic manure with moderate quantity and incorporation of crop residues in pragmatic crop rotation of a vigorous legume before wheat have great potentials for recovering the productivity of bread wheat in degraded crop fields.

Keywords

Bread wheatcrop residuescrop rotationdegraded crop farmsmanureproductivity
Type
Research Paper
Information
Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , August 2022 , pp. 337 - 349
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

‡

The online version of this article has been updated since its original publication. A notice detailing the changes has been published at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742170522000114.

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