Adaptation Trial of Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn) Varieties in East Hararghe Zone, Ethiopia Industry

Abstract

Developing improved varieties with high yield and wide adaptation is one of the major objectives. This indicates that there are some localities which are not fully addressed to satisfy the need for maximizing yield, using high yielder, disease resistant and early maturing variety of the crop is very important. Therefore, a field experiment was conducted during the main cropping season of 2018 and 2019 at Chelenko ATVET Collage and Boko Agricultural Research sites in Meta and Fadis Districts (Woredas), respectively, with an objective to select adaptable, high yielder, early maturing and disease resistant or tolerant varieties across moisture stressed areas of eastern Oromia, Ethiopia. The treatments consisted of eleven released finger millet varieties including standard check were used as planting materials. The experiment was laid out as a randomized complete block design and replicated three times. The combined mean analysis of variance revealed that highly significant difference (P < 0.01) for days to maturity, plant height, finger per plant, finger length and grain yield whereas, significant difference (P < 0.05) were observed for days to 50% flowering, effective tiller per plant and thousand seed weight. The earliest days to flowering were observed on Tesema variety with 84.33 days but there was no significantly different with other tested varieties. The results showed that Mereb was the earliest in terms of maturity taking only 126.9 days. The results of combined mean values indicated that, Aksum (3090 kgha-1) followed by Gute (2807 kgha-1) were found to be high yielding finger millet varieties whereas, Mereb (2103 kgha-1) was identified as the least seed yielding variety as compared to all tested varieties. These results depicted that across location Aksum variety was significantly higher grain yield advantage by about 11.11% over standard check followed by Gute. Therefore, Aksum and Gute varieties were showed consistency over locations in this study and recommended to demonstrate with production packages in Meta and Fedis districts and similar agro ecologies.