Effa Wolteji*, Berhanu Soboka and Dubiso Gacheno
This activity was conducted in Jarte Jardaga, Jimma Geneti, Jimma Rare, Guduru and Gida Ayana districts of western Oromia with the objective of demonstrating the recently released Bread Wheat varieties, Senate and Liban to the farming community in these districts. These districts were purposively selected based on potentiality for bread wheat production; and two potential PAs from each district were selected on the basis of accessibility and potentiality. After selecting and establishing FRG unit in each PA training was provided. Then after, two varieties of bread wheat, Liban as a recently released variety along with Senate; as standard check were planted on 20m*10m adjacent plots on 20 farmers’ fields. All recommended agronomic practices were equally applied to all the plots and the fields were closely supervised and were managed well. At maturity, the varieties were jointly evaluated with a team composed of researchers, Farmers and DAs. Despite the slight variability in criteria set by farmers at the respective locations, yield ,disease tolerance, seed color, plant height, pest resistance, tillering capacity, seed size, lodging resistant, early maturity, spike length, thrash ability were the common selection criteria across all locations. In almost all the locations Senate beat Liban both in yield and the criteria set for evaluation; except seed color, and impressing the farmers; especially number of spike length, number of seeds per plant and tillering capacity. With regard to yield, 57.90 qt/ha and 52.40 qt/ha were obtained from Senate and Liban; respectively putting Senate on the first rank.. Besides; Senate has 10.50 % yield advantage over Liban and this implies that Senate has higher yield advantage than Liban. Further; statistically ANOVA table and mean yield comparison (t-test) results of on farm yield performances showed that as there is highly significant difference at (p??0.05) between the varieties demonstrated. Furthermore; in terms of profitability, financial analysis result of the study also showed that using Senate variety can make more profitable than Liban. Therefore; as the variety has met the intended criteria of the farmers the pre-scaling up activity should follow next season.
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