Research
Participatory Approaches for Varietal Improvement, Itas Significances and Challenges in Ethiopia and Some Other Countries: A Review
Participatory approaches such as participatory plant breeding (PPB) and participatory varietal selection (PVS) have become a motivating force for agricultural research and rural development. These approaches have been developed over the past decades as an alternative to centralised breeding methods designed to better incorporate the perspective of end users into the varietal development process to efficiently address the desires of the farmers for increasing food security and improving livelihoods of farmers, especially in resource poor areas. In search of this concept, this review paper discusses the concepts, advantages, experiences, impact and challenges in these participatory approaches stressing the existing evidence of success by various authorities from different countries. In PPB, farmers are actively involved in the breeding process, from setting goals to selecting variable, early generation material. In PVS, farmers are given a wide range of new cultivars to test for themselves in their own fields. In some of the crops the genotypes selected by the breeder and farmers were almost similar but some differences existed. Since participatory approaches include research and extension methods to deploy genetic materials at on farm experiment so that the variety developed through PPB and PVS remarkably increased varietal diversity that can meet demand of different stakeholders. It could be concluded that, the benefits of participatory research approach includes development of farmers’ ownership of new technologies being tested and transferred; increasing degree of farmers’ awareness, increase varietal diversity and mobilization of farmers’ indigenous knowledge available within local communities for research and development planning and empowerment. Various authors’ indicated that participatory approach is a dominant way to involve farmers for selecting and testing new cultivars that are adapted to their needs, systems and environments. Therefore, for susta
Adaptability Evaluation and Selection of Improved tef Varieties in Growing Areas of Southern Ethiopia
Eight tef varieties including local checks were evaluated with the objective of selecting adaptable, best performing varieties and to assess farmers’ criteria for tef variety selection during 2008 and 2009 cropping season at Areka and Hossana stations of Areka Agricultural Research center in the Southern region of Ethiopia. In the study the Tef varieties namely Koye, Gimbichu, Quncho, Dega tef, Keytena, Amarach and Ajora-1 were collected from the Federal and regional Research center along with local checks, Ethiopia and Regional Agricultural Research Institute. These materials were put into trial at Areka Agricultural Research center station farms at Areka and Hossana of Wolayta and Hadiya Zones. The trial was laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Each plot measured 3m x 3m with 1m between plots and 1.5m between blocks. Sowing was done within the last week of July to 1st week of August 2008 and 2009. Data on various characters, such as plant height, panicle length, days to heading, and days to maturity and grain yield. Data was subjected to analysis of variance and there was highly significant difference (p<0.01) among the varieties for grain yield and some of agronomic traits. The results for the trials indicated that there were significant yield differences between the local check and the released varieties at two stations. At Areka, the combined analysis of variance over years indicated that varieties Koye, Amarch and Quncho gave the highest grain yield viz., 988.7, 984.3 and 958.7 kg/ha respectively. Similarly at Hosanna, varieties Gimbichu, Quncho and koye out yielded other varieties and had yield advantage of 31.9, 25.14 and 15.14 % over local variety, respectively. Both combined across locations over year’s analysis and farmers’ assessments identified two varieties Quncho and Koye as potential varieties for wider production. This result also indicated that farmers were as capable as Researchers in varietal choice. There
