Abstract
Tef (Eragrostis tef (zucc.) is one of the major cereal crop grown in Ethiopia where it is staple food for about 50 million people. Among many factors contributed to low production and productivity of tef lack of widely adopted improved tef variety is one of the factors. The experiment was conducted in south western Ethiopia across six test locations during the 2019 cropping seasons to study the nature of GEI on grain yield of tef and to classify environments based on the performance of genotypes. A total of seven tef varieties were laid out randomized complete block design with three replicates at each site. The Analysis of variance revealed highly significant difference for environment, genotype and genotype by environment interaction (p<0.001). Large proportion of the variation was explained by the environmental effect (69.22%) followed by the GEI effect (20.19%) and genotypes (7.5%) of the overall variation. GGE biplot analysis showed that PC1 and PC2 accounted for 42.37% and 30.42% of GGE sum of squares, respectively, explained 72.79% of the total variance. The six locations were divided in to three mega environments G28, G22 and G25 being the best varieties in each of the mega environments. However, G28 had the highest stability out of these three varieties. E6, E5 and E3 were ideal environments or the most suitable taste location for Teff breeding in the region, while E4 followed by E1 and E2 is a less desirable as testing environment.
Highlights
Tef (Eragrostis tef Trotter, 2n=40) is the poaceae family native to Ethiopia, which is centre of diversity for this important cereal crop [1]
Significant variation was observed for genotype by environment interaction of Tef grain yield, indicating that possibility of stability analysis
The partitioning of GE interaction through GGE biplot analysis showed that PC1 and PC2 accounted for 42.37% and 30.42% of GGE sum of squares, respectively, explained 72.79% of the total variance (Figure 1)
Summary
Tef (Eragrostis tef (zucc.) Trotter, 2n=40) is the poaceae family native to Ethiopia, which is centre of diversity for this important cereal crop [1]. It is one of the major cereal crop grown in Ethiopia where it is staple food for about 50 million people [2]. In crop improvement programs multi-environment performance tests across a wide range of environments are conducted to reduce the effect of GEI and to ensure that the selected genotypes have a high and stable performance across several environments as it is easier and cost effective both in terms of variety evaluation and seed multiplication [10]. The present study was conducted to examine the pattern of genotype by environment interaction (GEI) of tef yield by using GGE biplot analysis, to identify the most stable tef genotype for wide and/or specific adaptations
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