REVIEW ON INTEGRATED NUTRIENTS MANAGEMENT ON YIELD AND YIELD COMPONENTS OF BARLEY (Hordeum vulgare L.) IN ETHIOPIA

Barley is an important food and beverage crop in the highlands of Ethiopia. Despite many importance of barley and its many useful characteristics, there are several factors affecting its production. Low Soil fertility is one of the major constraints affecting its production. Integrated nutrient management, where both natural and man-made sources of plant nutrients are used, is the best approach to supply adequate and balanced nutrients and increase barley productivity in an efficient and environmentally benign manner, without sacrificing soil productivity of future generations. With this in view, integrated applications of organic and inorganic fertilizer sources on yield and yield components of barley were assessed in this review. By this maintaining soil fertility is one of the main factors affecting the sustainability of barley production. The advantages need to be integrated in order to make optimum use of organic and inorganic fertilizer achieve balanced nutrient management for barley yield. This review study showed that balanced fertilization application using both organic and inorganic fertilizers is important for maintenance of yield and yield components of barley. The basic concept underlying the combined applications of fertilizers is the adjustment of soil fertility and plant nutrient supply to an optimum level for sustaining desired barley productivity through optimization of the benefits from all possible sources of plant nutrients in an integrated manner. Therefore, increased attention should be being paid to developing an integrated soil fertility management that maintains or enhances soil productivity through balanced use of all sources of nutrients. So the objective of this review is to assess the effect of organic and inorganic fertilizers application on yield and yield components of barley.