Didik Hariyono, Nur Winda Rachmadhani, Mudji Rahaju
Maize (Zea mays L.) requires high nitrogen during its life cycle. Farmers often apply urea fertilizer to fulfill nitrogen needs of these plants. On the other side, urea has a low level of efficiency, in which the loss of the nitrogen content of urea on the dry land are between 60% up to 70%. The experiment was using randomized block design. The treatment consist of two factors. The first factor was biofertilizer treatment using Azotobacter inoculant, consist of three levels of inoculant doses including 0 mL L-1 (A0) or without bio fertilizer, 10 mL L-1 (A10) and 20 mL L-1 (A20). The second factor was inorganic fertilizer tretments using urea fertilizer, consist of five levels of urea doses including 0 kg ha-1 (U0) or no urea treatment, urea 75 kg ha-1 (U75), urea 150 kg ha-1 (U150), urea 225 kg ha-1 (U225) and urea 300 kg ha-1 (U300). Therefore, it needs biological input such as rhizobacteria to improve the efficiency of urea fertilization, and one of them is by utilizing Azotobacter. The results showed that generally there were not significant interaction between the dose of Azotobacter and urea, either on the growth and yield parameters, or on the plant nitrogen uptake. The inoculation of Azotobacter did not give any significant effect on the plant nitrogen uptake. Nitrogen uptake of maize reached the optimum value when the dose of urea supplied was 263.50 kg ha-1. The conclusion, inoculation of Azotobacter was able to increase the maize yield. However, increasing the dose of Azotobacter more than 10 mL L-1 did not affect to increase the maize yield. Maize yield reached the optimum value when the dose of urea supplied was 153.50 kg ha-1. © 2017 @ author (s).
Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, Brawijaya University, Jl. Veteran, Malang, 65145, Indonesia; Indonesian Legumes and Tuber Crops Research Institute (ILETRI), Jl. Raya Kendal Payak, Malang, 65101, Indonesia
