Savanna soils of Nigeria are inherently low in nutrients (particularly nitrogen
and phosphorus) thereby resulting in low yield of crops. To this end, field
experiments were conducted at the Teaching and Research Farm of College of Agriculture
Lafia in the Southern guinea savanna zone of Nigeria (08°30'N and 08°30'E,
18 m above sea level) during the rainy seasons of 2009, 2010 and 2011 to evaluate
the yield and agronomic efficiency of cowpea varieties under varying phosphorus
application rates. The experiment consisted of four levels of phosphorus in
the form of single super phosphate (0, 30 and 60 kg P ha-1) and four
varieties (DAN ILA, IAR-48, IT90K-277-1 and IT93K-452-1). The twelve treatment
combinations were laid out in a randomized complete block design with three
replications. The results obtained showed that number of pods per plant, pod
yield per plant, seed yield per plant, number of seeds per pod, 100 seed weight
and seed yield per hectare were significantly increased by the application of
30 kg P ha-1 in all the years of the experiment. Variety IT90K-277-1
consistently produced significantly, the highest values for all yield and yield
characters measured. Agronomically, application of 30 kg P ha-1 was
significantly more efficient than 60 kg P ha-1. Application of 30
kg P ha-1 to variety IT90K-277-1 produced significantly, the highest
seed yield per hectare and is therefore recommended. PDFFulltextXMLReferencesCitation
How to cite this article
I.M. Haruna and A. Usman, 2013. Agronomic Efficiency of Cowpea Varieties (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp)
under Varying Phosphorus Rates in Lafia, Nasarawa State, Nigeria. Asian Journal of Crop Science, 5: 209-215.