Abstract            Volume:13  Issue-5  Year-2025         Original Research Articles

Online ISSN : 2347 - 3215 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcret@gmail.com

Potato is one of the most important food security and cash crops in Ethiopia. However, its production and productivity are affected due to lack of N-fertilizer rate and timing application recommendations based on the local conditions. The existing climatic changes, inadequate poor agronomic practices, depletion of soil fertility, and lack of high yielding varieties. There is limited information on the timing and rates of nitrogen fertilizer application to boost potato production and productivity. As a result, a field experiment was conducted at the Bore on station and Ana Sora on farm in the highland areas of Guji zone during the 2022/23 and 2023/24 cropping seasons to determine the optimum rates and timing of N-fertilizer application for potato production, as well as to assess the cost and benefit of rates and timing of nitrogen fertilizer application for potato production. The treatments comprised of four rates of nitrogen (23, 46, 69, and 92 kg ha-1) and three timing of nitrogen split: all at planting, two times of application and three times of application, plus 200 kg of blended NPSB ha-1, which were applied to all plots equally. The experiment was laid out as a randomized complete block design in a 4 x 3 factorial arrangement replicated three times. An improved potato variety called Gudane was used as a test crop. The combined analysis of variance across years and locations revealed that nitrogen fertilizer rates and timing of application significantly influenced number of tuber per hill, marketable tuber yield, and total tuber yield of potato. However, nitrogen fertilizer rates and timing of application did not influence the days of 50% flowering, days to 90% maturity, plant height, and number of stem per plant, tuber weight, or unmarketable tuber yield of potato. So, the two times application with 69 kg N ha-1 fertilizer rates produce highest marketable tuber yield(43.34tha-1), maximum net benefit (773520 ETB/ha) and acceptable marginal rate of returns(600.80%)respectively. Therefore, it is recommended to use nitrogen two times application (½ doses at planting and ½ doses at 15 days after emergency) with 69 kg/ha-1 fertilizer rate for potato production since economically feasible to the farmers in the study area..

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