Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 M.Sc. student department of Agronomy and plant breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Bu Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Agronomy and plant breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Bu Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran.

Abstract

To investigate the effect of on-farm seed priming and different times of nitrogen fertilizer application on
maize Sc 704, an experiment was conducted at Agricultural Research Station, Asadabad- Iran, in 2011 as
a factorial in randomized complete block design with three replicates. The first factor was on-farm seed
priming in 3 levels (prime with tap water, prime with zinc solution and no primed. The second factor was
nitrogen application in 5 levels (without nitrogen application, all nitrogen applied at planting time, 2
stages application, 3 stages application and 4 stages application. Results showed that, grain nitrogen
content was highest in zinc solution priming and 4 stages nitrogen application (1.6%). Maximum grain
yield was achieved by triple nitrogen stages application and zinc solution priming combination (10796
kg/ha) that increased about 77% to no-primed and no-nitrogen treatment. In this experiment, seed priming
and splitting of nitrogen application time caused decrease in the harvest index. Priming increased
agronomic nitrogen efficiency, partial factor productivity of nitrogen and recovery efficiency of grain
nitrogen 32.7, 19.6, 30% compare with no-primed treat respectively and triple stages nitrogen application
increased these indexes 117.6, 23.6, 450% respectively in compare with one stage application of nitrogen
fertilizer.

Keywords