Household Fertilizers Use and Soil Fertility Management Practices in Vegetable Crops Production: The Case of Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia

Abstract

Article Information Large areas of farms are covered by variety of vegetable crops in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia. With a view to improve current vegetable production fertilizer use efficiency, survey has been conducted through collections of baseline information to describe household fertilizer uses and soil fertility management in vegetable production system using descriptive statistics. Multistage samplings were made to select representative growers in the six districts of East Showa zone. Based on field observations and group discussions, vegetable growers grouped their farm land into four local categories. The survey revealed that tomato growers apply variable rates of urea and DAP fertilizers for tomato cultivation. Survey results indicated that highest 43.61% of onion growers apply 200 kg of DAP fertilizer on their onion field, while 30.85% of growers apply 300 kg DAP per ha, another 39.35% apply, 400 kg and above DAP fertilizer, still 8.5% of onion growers apply 600 kg DAP fertilizer on their onion farm. This survey indicated that fertilizers were not wisely used in the vegetable crops production systems and the applications are in excess rate, which could leads to pollution of the environment from over dose application and from runoff in to the water bodies and leaching in to the ground water with economic loss. Most of the tomato and onion growers use three splits application of UREA and DAP mainly at transplanting, at first and second cultivation for both crops as top-dressing. The survey results indicated that 54.44% of onion growers apply an average of 230.35 kg ha-1 DAP at transplanting, while 46.53% apply an average of 188.29 kg ha-1 DAP at second split application, and finally 17.82% apply an average of 119.44 kg ha-1 DAP at last third split applications. This is the first document come across that vegetable growers in the CRV area apply DAP fertilizer as much as three splits. This indicates that there are no systems of updating of frontline development workers; poor extension services with shallow development workers knowledge made the growers totally depend on their own innovations for vegetable production.

Scoping study on fruits and vegetables; results from Ethiopia : an assessment of investment opportunities for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation opportunities for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

“…Furthermore, recent expansion of the irrigated area has not been well aligned with the need to train farmers in using irrigation water effectively for producing high value vegetables and fruits. Farmers' lack of skills and knowledge in this regard has resulted in disappointments, neglect of the irrigation infrastructure, overuse and inefficient use of other production inputs, and the overall sub-optimal use of irrigation water for producing fruits and vegetables (Eshete et al, 2020;Etissa et al, 2014;van Halsema et al, 2011). Inappropriate use of agro-chemical inputs has increased the concern of water pollution, as raised in our focus group discussions and in cases reported in the literature (Loha et al, 2020;Mengistie et al, 2017;Teklu et al, 2016).…”

Growth and physiological response of tomato to various irrigation regimes and integrated nutrient management practices

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Effect of Blended NPSB and Nitrogen Application rates on Growth, Yield, and Yield Components of Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) at Gitilo Dale Research Site of Wallaga University, Western Ethiopia

“…A factorial arranged in randomized completely block design was used for the experiment. In order to prevent leaching, NPSB rates were administered at sowing, while nitrogen rates were divided to apply 1/3 at sowing and the remaining 2/3 at 30 days following sowing [24].…”