Abstract

Author:
Md. Jewel Alam, Md. Ahsanul Tamim, Ummay Habiba, Dhipak Kumer Paul, M M Abdur Razzaque

Doi: 10.26480/sfna.02.2024.59.63

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Maize is a cereal crop and maize aphid, Rhopalosiphum maidis Fitch. is one of the most serious pests of them in Bangladesh as well as worldwide. This pest was controlled using a lot of techniques. To investigate the impact of different levels of nitrogen and seed rate on morpho-physiological traits, yield and yield attributes of maize through suppressing aphid infestation, a field experiment was conducted at the Entomology Field Laboratory, Department of Entomology, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh during the period of October 2022 to March 2023. The experiment comprised three levels of nitrogen (N1=240kg/ha, N2= 250kg/ha and N3= 260kg/ha) and three rate of seed namely S1=18kg/ha, S2=20kg/ha and S3=22kg/ha. The BARI hybrid butta-9 was used as an experimental crop. The two-factorial experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replicates. From the results of this study, it revealed that the application of single or combined levels of nitrogen and seed rate adversely affected on aphid infestation in plants, which ultimately caused a significant increase in grain yield per hectare. Among the tested different levels of nitrogen and seed rates, the combined levels of nitrogen at rate of 250 kg/ha (N2) and seed rate @ 20kg/ha (S2) significantly influenced on the highest plant height, maximum length & diameter without husk, number of grains per cob, grain weight per cob, and consequently, increased yield (7.43 t/ha) of BARI Hybrid butta-9 through the highest suppressing of aphid infestation (the lowest plant infestation was 39.26% compared to others). In case of the single effect, nitrogen (N2) and seed rate (S2) were the best practice than others, where returned higher yield and the lowest infestation. The results from correlation coefficient indicated that all parameters are shown positive correlation with each other except plant infestation caused by aphid. The results of regression revealed that the yield is shown strong significantly negative correlated with percent plant infestation. Based on the results of this research, therefore, it may be concluded that to obtain a higher yield of maize through suppressing aphid infestation, it should be applied nitrogen @ 250 kg/ha (N2) and seed rate @ 20kg/ha (S2).