Assessing The Effectiveness Of Farmyard Manure, Poultry Manure And Nitrogen Application For Wheat Productivity Under Various Tillage Systems

Abstract

Wheat is a staple food globally and is greatly affected by nutrient management practices usually required for fixing soil organic carbon and optimum growth of the crop. Therefore, to determine the effectiveness of amendments of organo-mineral and tillage systems on phenology, growth of wheat, and yield and yield components, a field experiment was conducted at the Agronomic Research Area, University of Agriculture Faisalabad. The experiment was triplicated to minimize the error percentage under a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with a split-plot arrangement. There were two tillage practices such as reduced tillage and conventional tillage which were randomized in main plots and six nutrient management practices as Control, required levels of N from NPK, farmyard manure (FYM), poultry manure (PM), half of N from NPK + half of N from FYM, and half of N from NPK + half of N from PM respectively. These treatments were randomized in subplots. Data on growth, yield, and phenology was recorded during the experiment according to standard procedure. Results revealed that wheat crops reached earlier phenological stage i.e., tillering, anthesis, and maturity under the application of conventional as well as reduced tillage along with poultry manure (PM) while reducing tillage along with control (no fertilizer) has shown delay in phenological attributes. Yield and yield parameters showed highly significant variations. The application of reducing tillage along with nutrient management practices performed better in terms of yield attributes such as the number of grains per spike, grain yield, and biological yield. Whereas conventional tillage showed poor results regarding yield-related attributes. Application of reduced tillage along with the farmyard manure performed better regarding growth parameters i.e., leaf area index, leaf area duration, crop growth rate, net assimilation rate, and total dry matter, while conventional tillage along with control (no fertilizer) recorded poor results. For statistical analysis, Fisher’s method of analysis of variance was used and assessed on a 5% probability level. The treatment means were compared using Tukey’s test of HSD.