Samuel K. Chomba, John R. Okalebo, Moses Imo, Patrick K. Mutuo and Walsh G. Markus
To increase food security among smallholder farmers in western Kenya, which is one of the hunger hotspot in the country, evaluation of soil factors that determine yield of the major staple crops such as maize may enable development of site specific management regimes. In this study, we used Richards- Chapman plant growth function to examine the effect of N, P and K fertilization on maize growth and yield in nine randomly selected farms at Suari in Siaya district, western Kenya. Correlation analysis showed that maximum attainable growth rate is the most important predictor of maize grain yield (r2 = 0.70; p= 0.035). The results also showed that combined N and P fertilizer application gave the highest maximum attainable maize stalk volume and growth rate. Applying N and P as single fertilizers had relatively similar growth responses, but lower than the N+P fertilizer application suggesting positive N+P interactions. These results indicate that maximum attainable stalk volume and growth rates are important indicators for measuring maize response to nutrient availability. The advantages of the multilevel nonlinear mixed effects model include its flexibility to model multiple sources of heterogeneity and complex patterns of correlation, and its higher power to make treatment comparisons.
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