Response of Onion to Rate of Nitrogen Fertilizer on Yield and Yield Componet at Gondar, North Western Ethiopia

Abstract

Onion (Allium cepa) is one of the bulb crops belonging to the family Alliaceae. It is a cool season, biennial crop, usually grown as   an herb and is diploid. A field experiment was conducted at University of Gondar in Meles Zenawi campus (Tseda) to study the response of onion to rate of nitrogen fertilizer by using randomization complete block design on 2015. Six treatment such of 0,100,125,150,175, and 200Kg/ha of nitrogen fertilizer, half during transplant and the remaining half after one and half month after transplanting has been used. Plant height, leaf number, pseudo stem thickness, pseudo stem length and disease incidence data has been collected. The data has been analyzed by SAS software and means were separated by LSD. There was highly significant difference in the trait fresh bulb yield. There was significance difference in disease incidence among N- rates. There was no significance difference among treatments for the trait plant height; leaf number, pseudo stem thickness and pseudo stem height. It is recommend that 125 kg/ha to be used because it shows that generally the best performance with fresh bulb yield and relatively with leaf number, pseudo stem height and thickness and have good performance in plant height next to 0 kg N/ha in the study area. The result of this study was based one location and a single season. Therefore, the result needs conformation of the varieties for more than one location in a couple of seasons to get reliable result.

Keywords: Onion, N-fertilizer rate, yield