Evaluation of Conservation Farming Practices in Improving Sorghum Yield at Tanqua Abergelle Wereda, Northern Ethiopia

Abstract

Traditional farming, particularly tillage has long been used by farmers to loosen the soil, make a seed bed and control weed. However, it has been discovered that tillage operations, overtime, cause a decline in soil fertility and overall productivity resulting from deterioration of soil physical, chemical and biological properties. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effect of minimizing soil disturbance on sorghum yield. The research was conducted at Tanqua Abergelle Wereda in specific localization called Gereb Giba testing site. Six treatments replicated three times according to Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) and plot size of 3.75 m x 4 m were used. The conservation farming practices used were basin and tie-ridger, one month earlier from its sowing date. Moreover, sorghum seeds were sown on nursery in the month of June, and was latter transplanted to field experiments. Agronomic data were collected for three consecutive years (2014 to 2016) and subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA). The obtained result indicates that there was significant difference (0.05%) between treatments especially with comparison to conventional tillage. The highest grain yield (1.41 t/ha) was obtained in the treatment (Ripper + tie-ridger + transplanting), followed by basin + transplanting, Ripper + tie-ridger + inter-cropping, Ripper + tie-ridger and conventional tillage with 1.33 t/ha, 1.21 t/ha, 1.16 t/ha and 0.95 t/ha respectively and the lowest was obtained from basin 0.72 t/ha, due to sandy soils, i.e siltation affects at initial growth stage. Therefore, using tie-ridger and basin with transplanting are more important in low receiving and eratic type of rainfall, due to moisture stress prone areas and to increase grain yield. Though, practicing such kinds should be taken as compulsory issue particularly in dry land areas.