A numerical model is developed to study magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) mixed convection from a heated vertical plate embedded in a Newtonian fluid saturated sparsely packed porous medium by considering the variation of permeability, porosity and thermal conductivity. The boundary layer flow in the porous medium is governed by Forchheimer-Brinkman extended Darcy model. The conservation equations that govern the problem are reduced to a system of non-linear ordinary differential equations by using similarity transformations. Because of non-linearity, the governing equations are solved numerically. The effects of magnetic field on velocity and temperature distributions are studied in detail by considering uniform permeability (UP) and variable permeability (VP) of the porous medium and the results are discussed graphically. Besides, skin friction and Nusselt number are also computed for various physical parameters governing the problem under consideration. It is found that the inertial parameter has a significant influence in increasing the flow field and the rate of heat transfer for variable permeability case. The important finding of the present work is that the magnetic field has considerable effects on the boundary layer velocity and on the rate of heat transfer for variable permeability of the porous medium. Further, the results obtained under the limiting conditions were found to be in good agreement with the existing ones.