Abstract: Soils in the highlands of Ethiopia usually have low levels of essential plant nutrients and low organic matter content especially low availability of nitrogen that has been demonstrated to be the major constraint to cereal production. Nitrogen fertilizer application is among the most critical decisions for barley production due to its large impact on growth, development and yield of the crop. Therefore, a field experiment was conducted at Jimma University, College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine. The objective was to evaluate the effects of N application rates on growth and development of food barley. The experiment was laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications having four nitrogen levels (0, 46, 66, 92 kg N/ha). The results of the study indicated that N application rates had a significant influence on some growth parameters studied and non significant on other. The maximum fresh weight (7.60 g) was recorded from the treatment that received the highest N rate (92 kg/ha) and the lowest fresh weight (7.48 g) was obtained from the control plot. These indicate that treatment four are recommended for the end users because as plant height and fresh weight increase the end product is also increase. Similarly, the lowest (86 cm) and the highest (78 cm) plant height were recorded from the treatments that received 0 and 92 kg N ha, respectively, indicating that N was a major growth limiting factor for barley production. On the other hand, the effects of N application rates on tiller number, length of spikelet and number of kernels were found to be significant.