Evaluation of Agro-Morphological Traits of Food Barley (Hordeumvulgare L.) Varieties in Different Row Spacing in Bure District, North-Western Ethiopia

Abstract

The average national yield of barley is low due to biotic and abiotic factors. This low productivity can be increased through improved agronomic management practices such as adjusting optimum row spacing and introduce improved varieties. The experiment was conducted in Bure district specifically Wangedamkebele, West Gojjam Zone, Northwestern Ethiopia in 2016/17 main cropping season. The objective was to evaluate the effects of inter row spacing and variety types on agro-morphological traits and to determine the optimum row spacing and variety for maximum productivity of food barely. Randomized complete block design in factorial arrangement with three replications was used for the experiment. The spacing used in the experiment was 20cm, 25cm, 30cm and35cm and the varieties used were Abay, HB 1307 and Setegn. The variety HB 1307 gave significantly highest grain yield with 35cm row spacing. The lowest grain yielding was obtained from Abay variety within 20cm.Main effects was recorded a significant (p<0.05) difference for all parameters. The interaction effects also showed significant difference for spike length, biological yield, grain yield, straw yield and harvest index. Correlation coefficients among the parameters were revealed that grain yield was highly significant and positive correlated with biological yield (r=0.81), effective tiller numbers (r=0.80), harvest index (r=0.74) and spike number (r=0.81), and significant with thousand kernel weight (r=0.39) and spike length (r=0.27). This finding showed that interactive effect of HB 1307 with 35cm row spacing was superior for achieving higher yield in the study area. However, further study has to be done under different locations and season to exploit tentative recommendation of the present stud.

Keywords: Grain yield, Improved varieties, Parameters.