No abstract

Establishment and management of pineapple production mainly lie on the production and supply of quality planting material with desirable root and shoot growth characteristics. Farmers in the South Ethiopia, uses different parts of pineapple like ground sucker, slips, and also crown sucker to transplant to the permanent fields. The fertilization practices were also not common, some farmers use to apply organic fertilizers like animal dung at the permanent field while there is no any media information generated to seedling production. Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the dry matter Production responses of non-conventional pineapple Seedling to organic based nursery media Preparation. The experiment was arranged in RCBD with three replication and six treatments. Six treatment combinations of compost to topsoil ratio in (0:1), (1:1), (1:2), (1:3) (1:4) and compost only (1:0). All the relevant parameters were collected and computed using SAS software. Treatment means were separated using LSD at 5% probability. The results revealed significant variation among the treatments that indicated, the soil based nursery media of compost (1:0) and (1:1) ratio of compost to topsoil responded the best dry matter production response of pineapple seedling in terms of, leaf fresh weight, leaf dry weight, root dry weight and total plant dry biomass. This result suggested that compost (1:0) and or compost to topsoil in (1:1) ratios was useful media to produce the best growth of pineapple seedling before transplanting to its production field.

Strip intercropping of coffee with enset could be an alternative approach to enhance resource use efficiency and land productivity, which is a common practice Southern Ethiopia. However, the optimum strip ratio of coffee to enset has been limited in the study area. In view of this, a field experiment was conducted at Awada Agriculture Research Sub-center between 2012 and 2018/19 to evaluate the effect of strip intercropping ratios of coffee to enset on yield and yield components of both crops and to determine economically optimum coffee to Enset strip intercropping ratio. The experiment was comprised of six treatments: sole coffee, sole Enset, 1C:1, 2:1, 3:1, and 4:1, and laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The analysis of variance revealed that both coffee and enset growth, yield, and yield components were significantly affected by coffee-enset strip intercropping. Coffee to enset ratio of (3:1) was provided the highest pooled mean yield of coffee, closely followed by (sole coffee)) compared with others strip ratios. Concerning the economic yield of enset, sole enset offers the maximum yield related to other treatments. Similarly, the maximum total LER of 1.63 was recorded from the coffee to enset ratio of (3:1) implies a yield advantage of 63% achieved from this strip ratio. Therefore, strip intercropping of coffee to enset at 3:1 ratio could be recommended to the study area as revealed by the highest yield and total LER for sustainable production and productivity.