Agriculture

ABSTRACT Nitrogen is essential for the growth and development of a crop plant and is a major soil nutrient element of soybean. Its deficiency in soil before soybean root nodule formation constitutes the most limiting situation for its production after soil moisture. A screen house pot experiment was conducted in 2008 to examine the effects of N application on the establishment and yield of soybean on a ferric luvisol of southern Nigeria. Top soil samples were collected and used to carry out a 2 x 7 factorial experiment in a completely randomized design with three replications. Parameters measured include plant height, number of leaves, biomass yield and N-content. There were gradual increases in plant height with plant age across the varieties studied. While TGx1485-1D produced a significantly higher biomass yield of 1.03g/pot, TGx1448-2E produced 0.85g/pot. Similarly, TGx1485-1D accumulated more N in shoot (4.68%) than TGx1448-2E (4.11%). This revealed the varietal supremacy of TGx1485-1D over TGx1448-2E in terms of better establishment and yield. However, applied N proved no significant influence on yield and N accumulation o