Abstract
Field experiment was conducted on three wetland soils during the 2011 late growing season at Ekiti State University Teaching and Research Farm to investigate the response of wetland rice to four rates of N (0, ST, 100 and 150 kg N/ha). The results obtained from the study showed that, nitrogen fertilizer application had significant (P<0.05) effect on rice dry matter, number of tillers, number of particles and grain yields. The use of 150 kg Nha-1 produced the maximum number of tillers/ M2 (29) at site 3 than all other treatments. Significantly, higher dry matter accumulation (0.60 and 0.55 kg/ m-2) was obtained on plots treated with 150 and 100 kg N ha-2 respectively. The best economic rice yield (4.39 t ha-1) was obtained using fertilizer rate based on soil test at site 1. The recovery by rice of labeled 15N was much higher using the soil test fertilizer application rate in site 3 while it was higher using 100 kg N ha-1 in sites 1 and 3. Results obtained for nitrogen fertilizer use efficiency (NFUE) in sites 1 and 3 showed that when input (fertilizer) is properly managed, rice grown on wetland soils usually make use of higher proportion of N applied. The economic analysis of rice production showed that site 1 using soil test fertilizer application rate gave the highest net farm income of USD 5244.20 per hectare
Keywords:
rice
n fertilizer
wetland soils
ado-ekiti
nue.
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