Abstract
Environmental pollution caused by synthetic fertilizers necessitates source and dose optimization of organic manures of animal origin for rainfed wheat accessions. A field trial was executed to determine the impact of chicken manure and farm yard slurry applied as sole sources of nutrients and in conjunction with chemical fertilizers on wheat accessions. Yield attributes, grain yield (Gy), biological yield (By) and harvest index (Hi) of wheat were recorded as response variables. Wheat (cv. NARC-2009) under chemical fertilizers alone remained unmatched in terms of yield attributes along with Gy (4.32 t ha(-1)), By (9.85 t ha(-1)) and Hi (44%). The same accession under co-application of chicken manure and chemcial fertilizers followed it with Gy of 4.08 t ha(-1), which in turn was followed by coaapplication of farm yard slurry and chemical fertilizers. The minimum Gy (2.94 t ha(-1)) was recorded by wheat (cv. Pakistan-2013) under no fertilization owing to significantly lesser peduncle and spike lengths, grains per spike, number of spikelets and 1000-grains weight. Thus, it can be inferred that wheat accessions respond differently to organic manures applied alone and in conjunction with reduced doses of chemical fertilizers under rainfed conditions and these research findings also suggest evaluating organic manures from plant and animal origins to obtain comparable wheat yield as that of chemical fertilizers.