COMPARATIVE STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF PLANT GROWTH RESPONSES UNDER CONTRASTING AGRICULTURAL MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69980/teqzcf69Keywords:
Agricultural Management Practices, Plant Growth, Tillage Practices, Chlorophyll Content, Maize YieldAbstract
Under different environmental conditions, agricultural management practices have an important effect on the growth, physiological development and yield of plants. The study sought to comparatively assess plant growth response as affected by different tillage and soil-input management practices using secondary data from agricultural field experiments in Chuka and Kandara for the growing season of 2016 and 2017. Five datasets relating to plant height, chlorophyll content, maize yield, soil water content and rainfall were studied. To determine differences among treatments and relationships among growth indicators, descriptive statistics, factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA), correlation analysis and multiple regression were employed. Soil-inputs treatments had significant effects on all of the plant growth and productivity parameters measured (p < .001), while the effect of tillage treatments was relatively small. Maximum maize grain yield (2.06 and 2.11) was obtained with the RFM treatment in both tillage categories, D0 and D15, respectively. Tillage had a significant effect on stover yield (p = .007) and there were significant interactions between treatments for some physiological and yield indicators. The correlation was significantly positive between the 10th stage plant height and grain yield (r = .767) and this regression accounted for 70.1% of the variability in grain yield. In general, the results suggest that management of soil inputs and site-specific agriculture practices can help to enhance maize growth and productivity, encouraging evidence-based sustainable agriculture practices.
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