Performance of Selected Tef Genotype for High Potential Areas of Ethiopia

Genetic improvement of native crops is a promising strategy to combat hunger in the developing world. Tef is the major staple food crop for approximately 73 million people in Ethiopia. As an indigenous cereal, it is well adapted to diverse climatic and soil conditions; however, its productivity is extremely low mainly due to lack of high yielder genotypes and susceptibility to lodging, biotic and abiotic stresses. To circumvent this problem, an experiment comprising 20 tef genotypes including the standard and local checks were evaluated in a randomized complete block design with four replications at nine environment to develop high yielding, stable and farmers preferred variety (ies) for high potential areas. Combined analysis of variance revealed highly significant (P ≤ 0.01) variations due to genotype, environment for most of traits and significant (p ≤0.05) genotype by environment interaction effects (GEI) for grain yield. AMMI analysis revealed 7.62%, 67.27%, 25.11% variation in grain yield due to genotypes, environments and GEI effects, respectively. The mean grain yield value of genotypes averaged over environments indicated that G12 (DZ-Cr-387 X Rosea (RIL-133) had the highest grain yield (2761 kgha-1) compared to the standard check variety Negus (2526kgha-1). In addition this candidate variety proved stable across environments for grain yield during the variety evaluation experiment. Therefore, this genotype was evaluated by the national variety released committee for release as a new variety for the year of 2019/20 and the technical committee approved it for fully released as new variety in 2020. Thus, this variety should be used as a commercial variety for potential tef growing areas to increase tef productivity and production in the country.