Abstract

Many parts of Moringa stenopetala are edible, providing a highly nutritious food for both humans and animals. Above all, the leaves of Moringa have exceptional nutritional value containing a variety of vitamins and minerals. Harvesting frequency had effect on leave biomass production of M. stenopetala provenances. This study was conducted to examine the effect of harvest frequency on M. stenopetala provenances grown at Sinana Agricultural Research sub site located in Dello-menna district of Bale zone, Southeast Ethiopia. To do so, three levels of M. stenopetala provenances (Abay-filiklik, Konso and Bale) were combined with three levels of harvesting frequency (2, 4 and 6 months) in factorial Randomized Complete Block Design. The result has shown that, the amount of leaf biomass yield recorded was considerably variable due to the effect of treatments employed in the study. Among the three frequent harvest intervals, 4 months interval had produced the highest fresh (3566.33 g/plant), air-dried (761.91 g/plant) and oven-dried (684.23 g/plant) leaves yield. In terms of provenances, Konso provenance had produced the highest fresh (4150 g/plant), air-dried (994.10 g/plant) and oven-dried (785.66 g/plant) leaves biomass yield throughout the frequent harvest cycles. While, Bale provenance had produced the least air-dried (466.23 g/plant) and oven-dried (394.76 g/plant) leaf yield. Therefore, for higher leaf biomass production harvest at 4 months interval from Konso provenance would be more advisable, followed by Abay-filiklik. This in turn infer, the possible and optimum leaf yield harvesting frequency within a year for the provenances would be 3 times. However, the nutritional content of the provenances along with their different harvesting stages needed to be investigated further in the future. 

Key words: Abay-filiklik, Air-dried biomass, fresh biomass, Konso, leaf yield, oven-dried biomass