Effect of lime, farmyard manure and NP fertilizers on maize yield and soil chemical characteristics in an ando-humic nitosol of central Kenya
1999
Kihanda, F.M. (Embu Regional Research Centre, Embu (Kenya)) | Wood, M. (University of Reading, Reading (UK). Department of Soil Science) | O'Neill, M.K. (International Centre for Research in Agroforestry, Nairobi (Kenya))
The Ando-Humic Nitosols of the highlands of central Kenya are characterised by low soil pH, low exchangeable bases and high percent aluminum saturation, resulting in low maize yields. An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of NP fertilizers (O or 50 kg N and kg P205 ha-1), K (0 or 50 kg K20 ha-1), agricultural lime (0 or 1.0 t ha-1) and farmyard manure (FYM) at 0 or 5.0 t ha-l) on maize yield and soil chemical characteristics between 1987 and 1995. There was no significant increase in maize yield due to K app1ication. Application of lime (averaged over NP and FYM treatments) increased the maize grain yield by 156 % whereas the app1ication of either FYM or NP ferti1izer (averaged over the other treatments resulted in similar increase in maize grain yield (90 %). The highest maize grain yield (4.5 t ha-l) was obtained by a combination of NP, lime and FYM. The highest loss in organic C (1.4 %) was observed in plots that had not received of NP ferti1izer and FYM. Agricultural lime increased the soil pH from less than 4.4 to above 5.5 irrespective of the NP or FYM treatments. The aluminum saturation decreased to zero in the plots that had received lime. There was a large significant increase in soil exchangeable Ca in plots that had received lime and a small, insignificant increase of soil exchangeable Ca was observed in plots receiving FYM.
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