EFFECTS OF SELECTED MULTI-PURPOSE TREES LEAF EXTRACT AND THEIR CONCENTRATIONS ON YIELD AND YIELD COMPONENTS OF MAIZE (Zea mays L.) AT ARBA MINICH, SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Maize is an important cash crop for smallholder farmers in the low land areas of Ethiopia. However, its productivity is low owing to a number of factors including deforestation, land degradation, infertile soil, underestimating the interaction of tree and crop, inappropriate land management and poor application of fertilizer. Under present study efforts have been made to find out the effect of leaf extract of some of potential MPTs of the area on the production of maize as farmers of the area are growing these MPTs on their farm without knowing its Allelopathic effect on the crop. So a Field experiment was conducted at Arba Minich University during 2019 cropping season to determine the effects of selected multi-purpose trees extracts on maize production. The specific objectives of the study were: to investigate the effect of multi-purpose tree leaf extracts on maize production, and to determine the mineral nutrient composition of multi-purpose tree leaf extracts. The experiment was arranged with two designs, i.e. Randomized Complete Block Design and Complete Block Design with three replications for field and lab analysis, respectively. The leaf extracts of Moringa stenopetala, Croton macrostachyus and Terminalia brownii with five concentrations (i.e. 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%) were used. Both types of the leaf extracts and their concentrations significantly affected growth parameters such as leaf length, leaf area, stem thickness and days to tussling of maize. However, growth parameters such as plant height, number of leaves per plants, days to silking and days to maturity were not significantly affected by the treatments. With the exception of number of cobs per plant all yield and yield components, like number of grains per row, number of grains per column, number of grains per cobs, 1000-seed weight of cob, length of cob, diameter of cob, fresh yield and dry yield of maize were significantly varied with leaf extracts of the selected MPTs and their concentration levels. Leaf extract of Moringa stenopetala showed the highest concentration of Nitrogen, Sulphur and Phosphorus. While Terminal brownie extract was rich in Mg, Ca, K, Na and Mn. Nevertheless, Croton macrostachys exhibited the highest content of micro-nutrients and consistently resulted in the highest performance of growth, yield and yield components and germination of maize seeds in bothfield and lab experiments.