Abstract            Volume:6  Issue-9  Year-2018         Original Research Articles

Online ISSN : 2347 - 3215 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcret@gmail.com

Declining soil fertility status and poor agronomic practices, including minimum use of inorganic fertilizers and inappropriate plant population are the major reasons for low productivity of soybean. A field experiment was carried out to determine the response of soybean to plant population and NP fertilizer in Kersa woreda of Jimma zone, south western Ethiopia during the 2015/2016 cropping season. Four levels of NP fertilizer (23/23, 23/46, 46/46 and 69/69 kg/ha) and plant population (166667, 200000, 33333 and 400000 plants/ha) were laid out in a factorial experiment in randomized complete block design with three replications. The analysis of variance also showed that the interaction effects of plant population and NP fertilizer were significant on number of pods, pod length, number of nodules, hundred seed weight, biomass yield and grain yield. Whereas plant population had significant influences on days to 50% flowering, days to 50% maturity, number of branch, number of nodules, plant height, leaf area, number of pods, number of seed per pod, hundred seed weight, biomass yield, and grain yield. Likewise, the main effects of NP fertilizer was significant on number of pods, number of branches, number of leaves, leaf area, plant height, days to maturity, fresh and dry weights, pod length, hundred seed weight, gran yield and harvest index. The highest grain and biomass yields of 1960 and 5491.7 kg/ha were recorded at the same a combination of plant population and NP fertilizer.

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