Abstract

The sowing date is one of the more important factors that determine yield of irrigated wheat. This experiment was conducted to find out proper sowing time for low land irrigated wheat varieties under Irrigation condition of Middle Awash, Ethiopia. The experiment was laid out in RCBD design with three replications seven sowing dates (1st October, 15th October, 30th October, 15th November, 30th November, 15th December, and 30th December) and Gambo wheat variety was used as test crop for the experiment as treatments. Productive tiller/plant plant height Grain/spike, Biomass yield t/ha, grain yield kg/ha, 1000 seed wt, straw yield and harvest index were significantly affected by the treatment. However, total tiller/plant and spike length were not significantly affected by the treatment. The highest biomass yield (16.1 t ha-1) was obtained when crop was sown on 15th October it was at par with 3858.1 kg ha-1 and 3674.6 kg ha-1 obtained from 1st October and 15th November respectively. The lowest biomass yield (5.1 t ha-1) was recorded in case of late sowing i.e. 15th December, which was at par with 30th December. The highest grain yield (3881.2 kg ha-1) was obtained when crop was sown on 1st October it was at par with 3858.1 kg ha-1 and 3674.6 kg ha-1 obtained from 15th October and 15th November respectively. The lowest grain yield (559.3 kg ha-1) was recorded in case of late sowing i.e. 15th December, which was at par with 30th December. Therefore, it can be concluded that sowing date 1st October, 15th October, and 15th November appears as the best sowing date to obtain maximum grain yield of Ga’ambo variety under irrigated condition