Appraisal of Yield and Yield Components of Wheat with Integrated Management of Nitrogen Sources

Integrated management of nitrogen sources is vital for sustaining crop productivity. Field experiments were conducted to evaluate the effect of integrated management of nitrogen sources on yield and yield components of wheat at Agricultural Research Station Buner, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan during 2015-16 and 2016-17. Experiments were laid out using RCBD with 3 replications. Winter wheat variety Pirsabak-2015, as a test crop, was sown on 12th November at same piece of land following same randomized layout each year. Farm Yard Manure (FYM) and Poultry Manure (PM) were used as organic while Urea as inorganic sources of nitrogen. Treatments were N1 (Control), N2 (all added N from Urea), N3 (all added N from FYM), N4 (all added N from PM), N5 (½ of added N from Urea + ½ from FYM), N6 (½ of added N from Urea + ½ from PM) and N7 (½ of added N from FYM + ½ from PM). Nitrogen @ 120 kg ha^-1 was computed according to lab analysis from each combination except N1 and incorporated once after final seed bed preparation each year. Based on mean data over two consecutive years, N6 resulted significantly maximum spike length (9.8 cm), spikes m^-2 (303), grains spike^-1 (43.1), 1000 grain weight (34.71 g) and grain yield (3917 kg ha^-1) showing an increase of 122.2% in grain yield over the control. Significant improvements in abovementioned parameters were observed during 2016-17 as compared to 2015-16. It is concluded that integrated use of ½ of the added N from Urea and ½ from PM resulted higher performance of all investigated parameters, the efficiency of which further increased with passage of time and is recommended for improvement of wheat production.