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Bread Wheat is the dominant crop in temperate countries being used for human food and livestock feed. However, its productivity is mainly constrained by poor soil fertility and lack of site specific fertilizer (NPS) and Verities recommendation. Therefore, this experiment was carried out to determine the effects of variety and NPS fertilizer rates on growth, yield and yield components of bread wheat under rain fed conditions during the 2023/2024 cropping season. Factorial combinations of four NPS fertilizer levels (0, 50,100, and 150 kg ha-1) with four bread wheat varieties (Ogolcho, Kekaba, kingbird and Shorima) were laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Analysis of the results revealed that the days to 50% heading, days to 90% physiological maturity, plant height, number of Seeds per spike, Aboveground dry biomass yield, grain yield, leaf area index, Harvest index, were highly significantly (p<0.01) affected by main effects of NPS rate and varieties, and numbers of tillers per plant was significantly (p<0.05) affected by main effects of NPS rate and significantly (p<0.05) by varieties while 50% days to emergency and were affected by main effects of NPS fertilizer rates only. The longest days of 50% emergency (4.91), days of 50% heading (72.68), days to 90% physiological maturity (106.67), plant height (72.46 cm), leaf area index (17.40), number of Seeds per spike (38.20), Total of tiller per plant (3.73), aboveground dry biomass yield (77500 kg ha-1), thousand seed weight (40.33), grain yield (450 kg ha-1) and harvest index (38.61)were obtained at the NPS rate of 150 kg ha-1. With regards to the main effects of varieties Kingbird recorded the longest days of 50% Emergency (4.25), 50% heading (72.68), and variety shorima days to 90% physiological maturity (106.67), plant height (72.46 cm), Total number of tiller per plant (3.73), Leaf area index (17.40), number of seeds per spike (38.20), aboveground dry biomass yield (7.75 t/ha), and Ogolcho variety with grain yield (2.44 t/ha), and harvest index (38.61) thousand seed weight (41.46). Interaction of blended NPSB rate with varieties significantly affected the number of total tillers and productive tillers where highest total tillers (441.7 per m2) and productive tillers (390.0 per m2) were recorded at the combination of 200 kg NPSB ha1 with variety Shorima. The economic analysis revealed that variety Oggolcho with the application of 150 kg NPS ha-1 gave the highest net benefit of 148299.5ETB ha-1 with marginal rate of return 105.89%. Therefore, from the result of present study that the application of the 150 kg ha-1 NPS fertilizer with Oggolcho variety can be tentatively recommended for farmers for production of wheat in the study area and other areas with similar agro-ecological conditions.
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