Description of Farmers’ Varieties of Cactus Pear (Opuntia ficus-indica L.) in Hintalo Wejerat, South East Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

Abstract

Cactus pear is a fruit crop which can grow in water-limited conditions, high temperatures and poor soils wherein cereals and pulses cannot survive. It is used as a source of food, forage, fuel wood, cash income, raw material for various industrial products, as live fences and soil conservation purposes. This multi-functionality of the crop identifies it as a plant that imperative to areas in arid and semi-arid regions. However, this fruit crop is not developed as in case of other agricultural crops as fruit and forage varieties due to difficulties such as lack of adequate characterization and evaluation, a few collections maintained worldwide and difficulties and costly of preservation resulted from its perennial habit and large plant size. In Ethiopia particularly in Tigray Regional State where cactus pear is dominantly growing, this fruit crop has kept ignored and not yet researched. Further, little work has done on systematic characterization and evaluation of cactus pear in the region and their germplasm is not collected and maintained. Thus, this study was conducted to describe cactus varieties of farmers’ of Waza Adibuna of Hintalo Wejerat, one of the werdas of southeast Tigray to contribute for its improvement and conservation. Accordingly, six commonly growing farmers’ cactus varieties (Enfirir, Maymayo, Wedwado, Lamtsa, Harfaf and Michla) were described based on the internationally accepted and standardized descriptor methods. Characters like plant descriptor, cladode descriptor and fruit descriptors and other observation were described.

Keywords: cactus pear, characterization, varieties