Effects of Fertilizer Types on The Agronomic, Forage Yield And Nutritional Value of Forage Oat Accessions in the Highlands of Ethiopia

The experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of fertilizer type and oat accessions on agronomic performance, forage yield and chemical composition under acidic soil condition in Ethiopia. This study employed randomized complete block design (RCBD) using 3 by 3 factorial with three replications. The forage oat accessions used in the study were: CI8251, CI8237 and Jassari and the three fertilizer types used were inorganic (NPK), organic (compost) and without fertilizer. The data collected from the study includes: plant morphological parameters such as plant height (PH), leaf length (LL), number of leaves per plant (LNPP), number of tillers per plant (NTPP), forage dry matter (DM) yield and chemical composition of the forage. The collected data were analyzed with general linear model (GLM) of statistical analysis system (SAS) version 9.4. The result indicated most of the morphological parameters were not significantly affected by the effects of fertilizer type while oat accession had also effect on these factors. Regarding fertilizer application, there was significant different (p<0.0001) among fertilizer types in all morphological parameters. Among chemical composition parameters dry matter (DM), DM yield, organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP), CP yield, ASH, neutral detergent fiber (NDF), acid detergent fiber (ADF) and acid detergent lignin (ADL) were significantly different (p<0.0001), for both fertilizer and oat accessions. The highest CP content was observed for the treatments received chemical fertilizer (NPK) which was 11%. It can be concluded, that the addition of inorganic and organic fertilizer with the grass species in the present study improved oat accession morphological characteristics which could be a reflection of biomass yield and also the nutritional value of oat grass in this experiment. Of the oat accessions assessed, CI825 was selected in terms of DM yield and CP contents followed by plant CI8237 and Jassari in the current study area.