Pre-extension Demonstration of Soil Test Crop Response Based Phosphorous Calibration Study for Maize Production (Zea mays L.) at Abay Choman District, Western Oromia, Ethiopia

Pre Extension demonstration was held in the Abay Choman district to show how using soil tests can help decide the right amount of phosphorus fertilizer for growing maize. The goal was to create awareness about why soil tests are important for maize production and to gather feedback from farmers and others stakeholders for future improvements in technology. The test was done on the fields of seven farmers, which were used to repeat the experiment. There are two treatments: (T1) blanket recommendation and (T2) a recommendation based on a soil test that indicates how much phosphorus fertilizer to use, along with a recommended nitrogen fertilizer amount of 92 kg per hectare. Plot size for each treatments was 10 m x 10 m = 100 m². Maize variety “BH-661” was used with the spacing of 50 cm and 80 cm between seeds and rows respectively. A total of 4 FRGs units which are having 43 male and 17 female members were established. For gender issue 22.1% of the participants were women and 77.9% were men. A grain yield of 6275 kg per hectare was recorded as the most favorable when fertilizers were utilized based on soil analysis. The application of a standard fertilizer led to a yield of 5,136 kilograms per hectare. The average grain yield obtained with soil test crop response based suggested phosphorus fertilizer was 6275 kg/ha with yield advantage of 22.17% over blanket recommendation. Moreover, financial investigation result appeared that net of return 119162.00 and 98850.00 ETB per hectare were picked up from soil test crop response based p-fertilizer suggestion and blanket recommendation respectively. Based on these actualities, the scaling up/out of soil test crop response based suggested P-fertilizers should be carried out for encourage maize generation at the study area.