Two field trials were conducted during the 2013 and 2014 cropping seasons at the Teaching and Research Farm of the National Institute for Horticulture Bagauda (lat. 190 41 N, long 120 261 E, 721m above sea level) Kano in the Sudan Savannah ecology of Nigeria. The treatments consisted of three seed rates (3, 6 and 9 kg ha-1), two sowing methods (broadcasting and dibbling) and poultry manure at (0, 2.5 and 5.0 t ha-1 and NPK (90:60:60 kg ha-1). The experiment was laid out in a split-plot design with three replications. The combination of sowing methods and poultry manure constituted the main plot, while seed rate constituted the sub-plot. In this study, 9 kg seed ha-1 gave the highest germination count and grain yield. The 3 kg ha-1 seed rate significantly produced better growth attributes such as plant height, leaf area index, number of tillers plant-1, crop growth rate and relative growth rate but lower grain yield. Dibbling method produced significantly higher growth parameters such as plant height, leaf area index; number of tillers plant-1, crop growth rate and relative growth rate which consequently out-yielded broadcasting method. Application of poultry manure rate at 2.5 t ha-1 produced significantly optimum and similar performance of plant height, leaf area index, crop growth rate, relative growth rate and number of tillers which translated into higher grain yield comparable to the application of 5 t ha-1 of poultry manure and NPK. Based on the results obtained from this study, it can be concluded that broadcasting finger millet at 9 kg seed ha-1 or dibbling the crop at 6 kg seed ha-1 with the application of 2.5 t ha-1 gave significantly higher grain yield which was comparable to the application of NPK at (90 kg N, 60 kg P and 60 kg K ha-1) in the Sudan Savannah Ecology of Nigeria.
M et al. (Wed,) studied this question.