Abstract:
Soil fertility decline is a major constraint to groundnut production in Uganda. Whereas options exist to
address this constraint, many have not been adopted by smallholder farmers. This study was designed to
demonstrate the profitability of different integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) technologies in light
of smallholder farmer conditions. On-farm experiments were set up in Mbale, Tororo and Bukedea
districts of Uganda, with different inorganic fertilizer and farmyard manure (FYM) combinations and four
groundnut varieties: Etesot, Red beauty, Serenut 2 and Serenut 3. Results revealed that under the ISFM
options considered, Serenut 3 and Red beauty were the most profitable varieties. Serenut 3 and Red
beauty posted positive gross margins for all treatments including the control. However, Serenut 2 posted
negative gross margins across all treatments while Etesot had negative gross margins for the control and
at 4.37 kg P ha-1plus FYM. The optimum combination of fertilizer occurred at8.73 kg P ha-1 for red beauty
and 4.37 kg P ha-1+ 2 t FYM for Serenut 3, suggesting that blanket recommendations of ISFM interventions
on groundnuts irrespective of variety, are not advisable owing to different varietal responses to ISFM
interventions, different production costs and price of the groundnuts.
