Participatory Variety Selection of Improved Mid-land Maize hybrids in the Gurage Zone, Ethiopia

Abstract

Maize is a priority crop for farmers because of its reliable source for food and feed in many rural communities of the southern region of Ethiopia, particularly the Gurage zone. However, farmers in the area are still growing low yielding and obsolete maize hybrids. According to previous survey reports, farmers of the area have not been benefiting from recent maize improvement efforts. The objective of the study was to identify high yielding and adaptable maize hybrids through participatory variety selection (PVS) there by accelerating the replacement of obsolete hybrids with farmers-prefered newly released varieties. In this study, farmers in two woredas of the Gurage zone, Abeshge (Fitejeju and Wolkite on-station) and Misrak Meskan (Batilejano and Enseno-Ousmae), evaluated three newly released and one old hybrid varieties under four rainfed environments. The hybrids included for this study were obtained from the Bako National Maize Research Program, which considered  the three hybrids (BH549, BH547 and BH546) as recent releases while  BH540 as old hybrid check widely grown in the area. Combined analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the hybrids differed significantly (p<0.01) for all agronomic traits considered in this study. The highest mean yield was obtained from BH549 (8901.2 kg ha^-1) followed by BH546 (8560.7 kg ha^-1), while BH540 (6250.0 kg ha^-1) produced the lowest mean grain yield. Ranking was also used to identify the best hybrid(s) preferred by farmers. Accordingly, farmers identified the high-yielding maize hybrids (BH549 and BH546) that had good ranks from the participatory variety selection based on their selection criteria which is in  harmony with the researchers’ results. In conclusion, BH549 and BH546 hybrids were found superior and could be considered for extensive production in the tested areas as well as similar other agro-ecologies. It was also noted that farmers’ preferences viz., yielding ability, husk cover, numer of seeds per cob and  resistance to lodging need to be incorporated in maize breeding programs