Registration of New Bread Wheat Variety (Biftu) for Low to Mid-Altitude Wheat-Producing Areas of Ethiopia

Abstract

In Ethiopia, wheat (Triticum Sp.) is cultivated on a total area of 2.1 million (1.7 million ha for rain fed and 0.4 million ha for irrigated areas) hectares of land; the annual total production is 6.7 million tons of grains during 2022. Recently released commercial wheat varieties have higher genetic gain for economic trait than the older varieties. Forty-seven advanced genotypes and three standard checks were tested across different environments from 2019 to 2020 in Ethiopia. The genotypes were arranged in row column design with three replications. Analysis of variance and mean separation were carried out to differentiate the significance difference in genotypes. The results revealed that the advanced genotypes viz. BW173528 and EBW17-365 had significantly higher for grain yield than the other genotypes. In addition, BW173528 has better diseases resistance than the checks; Deka, Kakaba and Kingbird. Therefore, this genotype was tested and verified on farmers’ fields in 2021. Based on its performance and good quality traits the advanced line BW173528 was released for production in low moisture stress areas of Ethiopia and named as: Biftu.