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Many factors like soil fertility, imbalanced nutrition, disturbed soil properties, cultivars being grown, weed infestation, etc. limit maize yield in the experimental area. The objective of the field experiment was to determine the effects of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer rates on growth, yield and yield components of maize in Assosa district, Benishengule Gumuze. The treatments consisted of factorial combinations of four levels of nitrogen (45, 65, 85, and 105 kg N ha-1) and four levels of phosphorus ( 14,17,20 and 23 kg P/ha). The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. All the collected data was subjected to analysis of variance using SAS version 9.1.3 software. The means were separated using the DMRT (Duncan’s multiple range test) test at 1% or 5% level of significance. In this study, plant height was highly significantly (P <0.05) affected by the main effects of N and the interaction of N and P. The highest grain yield (5687 kg/ha) was obtained with the highest rate of N (105 kg N/ha) and P (20 kg P/ha). P levels from 14 kg/ha to17 kg/ha increase grain yield highly, but when P levels increase from 17 kg/ha to 20 & 23 kg / ha grain yield and above -ground dry biomass yield became decreases. Analysis of variance showed that N rate had a highly significant (p < 0.01) variation in aboveground dry biomass yield. The maximum above -ground dry biomass yield (3714 kg) was observed in the interaction of 105 kg N/ha with 17kg P/ha. Increasing N levels from 45 to 105 kg N ha-1 significantly (P < 0.01) increased thousand grain weight. Maximum thousand seed weight (269.3) was measured in plots treated with 105 kg N/ ha , whereas minimum mean thousand seed weight (226.9) was recorded in plots supplied with 65 kg N ha-1. The result of the economic analysis showed that the highest net benefit of ETB (184794 ha -1) was obtained from the application of 105kgN/ha with 20 kg P/ha which was the highest net benefit and MRR (12947%) is profitable. Correlation analysis showed that yield components of maize, namely thousand seed weight, above -ground dry biomass, harvest index , ear length, day to 50% silking and day to 50% tasseling, were positively and highly correlated with grain yield (r = 0.56**), (r = 0.5**), (r = 0.8**), (r = 0.4*), (r =0.4*) and (r = 0.7**) , respectively. Finally, the interaction of 105 kg /ha N and 20 kg /ha P is economically important for maximum grain yield of maize and should be used effectively to boost maize productivity in the district and similar agro-ecologies.
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