Abstract

Food barley grain is used to make different traditional food stuffs and drinks. The straw is also used for feed other purposes. National area coverage of barley in Ethiopia was around 959,273.4 ha. Food barley production share was estimated to be 90% while that of malt barley having a share of 10% in Ethiopia. The primary zones in Ethiopia for producing food and malt barley are in Oromia region, among which West Arsi zone, in particular, has great potential for cultivating both food and malting barley. Optimum plant population is an important yield determinant of food barley, but there is no information on the optimum barley plant density at west Arsi. Therefore, the field experiment was executed with the objective of evaluating the response of yield, yield components and related quality traits of food barley to plant population densities. Three food barley varieties and six levels of plant density were evaluated during growing season of 2018 and 2019 G.C. The design was split plot design with varieties assigned to main plot factor and plant density to sub-plot factor with three replications. The analysis result indicates the main effects of variety and fertilizer rate had significant effect on plant height, grain yield, biomass yield, number of grain per spike and harvest index. Plant population of 300 plants/ m2 (142 kg ha-1) gives higher (6311.1 kg ha-1) grain yield while the lowest grain yield (4268.8 kg ha-1) was scored at the lowest plant density (100 plants / m2). Plant density significantly affected above ground biomass and harvest index. The highest (16899 kg ha ha-1) and smallest (12026 kg ha-1) mean value of above ground biomass were recorded at 300 plants/ m2 and 200 plants/ m2, respectively. The highest harvest index was obtained at 130 kg ha-1 which is 42.2% while lowest harvest index was 33.4% recorded at 300plants/m2. Besides to this, the study was conducted that based on grain yield and yield components of food barley. Therefore the production of food barley with higher yield, optimal kernel protein concentration and higher economic benefit was obtained when plant population density of 300 plants/ m2 (142 kg ha-1) is used for the production of food barley varieties around West Arsi area and similar agro-ecology.