Effect of different furrow and plant spacing on yield and water use efficiency of maize

Kidane Welde and Hintsa Libsekal Gebremariam

Agricultural Water Management, 2016, vol. 177, issue C, 215-220

Abstract: In southern zone of Tigray, Ethiopia, there is a large competition between maize production and other horticultural crops for the limited irrigation water. Hence, there is an imminent need to improve the water use efficiency or more importantly the water productivity of the area. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of furrow and plant spacing and their interaction on yield and water use efficiency of maize. Experimental treatments include three levels furrow spacing (50, 70 and 90cm) and three levels of plant spacing (20, 25 and 30cm) were arranged in factorial RCBD design under three replications. Maize (BH543 variety) was used in this study in which all agronomic practices were treated equally including the amount of water applied. Maize water requirement was estimated using CROPWAT 8 software. The result revealed that there was significant difference among the treatments (p<0.05) for grain yield, biomass yield and irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE). But it was not significantly different for the yield components (plant height and number of cobs per plant). Maximum grain yield (56.26qt/ha) and IWUE (0.876kg/m3) were obtained from 50cm furrow and 30cm plant spacing interaction. But maximum biomass yield (250.6qt/ha) was obtained from 50cm furrow and 20cm plant spacing interaction. The IWUE ranges from 0.357kg/m3 to 0.876kg/m3 for the equal amount of irrigation water applied (642mm) for each treatment. This shows how much IWUE of small scale farmers can vary as their agronomic practice (plant and furrow spacing) is different from one another. Hence, it can be concluded that irrigation agronomist experts and development agents of the study area must create awareness to the small scale farmers to exercise 50cm furrow spacing with 30cm plant spacing to improve and increase the water productivity of maize.

Keywords: IWUE; Small-scale irrigation; Agronomic practice; Maize; Yield (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377416302803
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:177:y:2016:i:c:p:215-220

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2016.07.026

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().