Participatory Varietal Selection of Bread Wheat Cultivars (Triticum Aestivum L.) for Moisture Stress Environment of Somali Regional State of Ethiopia

Abstract

The centralized plant breeding techniques of the green revolution have yielded good results in the more favorable agricultural environments. However, most low-resource farmers in marginal areas have not benefited from these varieties. As an alternative to centralized breeding, farmer participatory approaches using participatory varietal selection (PVS) and participatory plant breeding (PPB) can be used. In participatory varietal selection, farmers are given a wide range of new cultivars to test for themselves in their own fields. Participatory variety selection (PVS) trials were conducted in 2015/16 growing season of Tulugule woreda of Somali region to evaluate and determine suitable high yielding varieties of bread wheat. Twenty improved varieties and one local check (local variety) were used for the study at two farmer villages: Tuluguled woreda of fafen zone. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design and the trials were replicated three times. Data were collected on Days to maturity (DTM), Plant height (PH), Number of tillers (NT), Lodging index (%), Grain yield (GY), Biomass yield (BY) and Harvest index (HI). The results of analysis revealed that a non-significant difference among the varieties for most the agronomic traits recorded except for days to maturity, grain yield and harvest index which is significant. Variety Shorima, Pavon-76, Hoggana and Mekelle-3 gave the highest grain yield of all the test varieties respectively, while ETBW 5879, UTQUE96/3/PYN/BAU//MILLAN, Danda'a and Local variety (check) variety showed the smallest grain yield respectively. Grain yield had strong significant positive correlations with harvest index (HI, r=0.89^**) and grain yield per day (GYPD, r=0.99^**), but number of tillers (NT, r = -0.03 was negatively non-significantly correlated with grain yield. The results also revealed that farmers’ preferences in some cases coincide with the researchers’ selection. However, in general farmers have shown their own way of selecting a variety for their localities. These parameters include earliness, high yield, plant height, moisture stress tolerance, physical appearance, and tiller number. Hence, it is a paramount important to include farmers’ preferences in a variety selection process. Therefore, based on objectively measured traits, farmers’ preferred Pavon-76 with a rank of (1.95), followed by Ogolcho, Kakaba and Mekelle-3.

Keywords: participatory varietal selection, varieties, farmers’ preference