Performance of Spring Maize Under Integrated Nitrogen Management.

Maize is nitro-positive and third most important cereal crop in Pakistan after wheat and rice. Integration of different manures with chemical fertilizers is a sustainable approach of the new era to enhance the fertilizer use efficiency, quality of seed and bringing improvement in physical and chemical properties of the soil. Keeping this in view a field experiment was conducted to evaluate three sources of nitrogen (urea, farmyard and poultry manure with their different combinations) for achieving high yield of spring maize hybrid (32-W-86) at the Agronomic Research area, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan, for two consecutive years; 2006 and 2007, in a randomized complete block design with three replications. A total requirement of 250 kg N ha-1 for maize hybrid was obtained from the three sources either alone or in different combinations. The treatments included were control, N% from FYM(100), N% from Urea+FYM (25+75), N% from Urea+FYM (50+50), N% from Urea+FYM (75+25), N% from Urea (100), N% from PM (100), N% from Urea+PM (25+75), N% from Urea+PM (50+50) and Urea+PM (75+25). Results exposed that maximum BCR (3.77), economical yield (7.66 t ha-1), cob length (25.03 cm), number of grains per cob (411) and 1000 grain weight (274.7 g) were obtained with the treatment where 50% N was applied through urea and 50% from poultry manure. Maximum grain protein contents (8.89%) were also obtained with the same treatment. It is concluded that under integrated nitrogen management, synergistic and complementary effects can be seen on overall performance of maize.