Varietal and Seed Replacement As a Means to Improve Crop Productivity in GTP I: The Case of Major Cereals in Some Districts of Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Cereals are major food crops in area coverage and total production in Ethiopia; thus share the largest proportion compared to other grain crops such as pulses and oil crops. It has been realized that the productivity of cereals is too low compared with potential productivity of the crops. Surveys on identification of crop production constraints indicated that limited access to crop production technologies such as suitable and better yielding crop varieties and improved management practices have been identified as some of the major constraints that pinpointed as  causes for low productivity. This study was aimed to improve crop productivity at farm levels through intensive and massive crop varietal and seed replacement. During GTP-I of Ethiopia, participatory on farm evaluation of technologies which were available for major cereal crops such as maize, tef, barley and wheat in different districts of Southern Ethiopia was done as first phase of this study to identify the most suitable ones for different agro-ecologies. Identified technologies were multiplied at large scale in the next phase to disseminate widely to users in pre-scaling up program. In four rounds, a total of 883quintals (88300kg) of seeds from different selected crop varieties were disseminated to cover 1272 ha of land there by more than 5066 farmers in different districts were directly benefitted in improving productivity at their farm levels.

Keywords: Cereals, Varietal and seed replacement, Crop technologies, Pre-scaling up