Producing Areas Of Ethiopia Research Articles

Proximate Composition and Mineral Content of Traditionally Dried Fish Products from Selected Parts of Ethiopia

Drying is one of the old aged food preservation techniques that can be done efficiently in a cost-effective way. Rural fish producing areas in Ethiopia commonly use drying technique when the need for preservation is necessitated. Despite the relevance of the information, nutrient composition of dried fish products found in Ethiopia are not well recorded. This study was designed to evaluate the proximate composition and some mineral content of traditionally dried fish from sites located around the lakes of Tana, Ziway and Chamo in Ethiopia. A total of eighteen composite samples were analyzed for proximate composition and mineral content determination. The dried fish products had high crude protein (52.21 to 70.88)%, crude fat (2.89 to 8.60)% and minerals such as Calcium (36.44 to 9078.44 mg/100g), Potassium (636.61 to 3073 mg/100g), Phosphorous (570 to 5330mg/100g) and Sodium (78.92 to 7433.26). Because of difference in water content of the final dried product, variations were observed on the major nutrient compositions. Dried fish products generally proved to be important source of protein, energy and minerals. Besides the composition, dried fish products can be stored for extended time, thus increase accessibility of nutritious food. However, improvement of the drying technique, including hygienic processing is necessary.

Impact of precursor crop and nitrogen fertilizer on the productivity of finger millet based cropping system and soil fertility in Lake Tana basin of Ethiopia

Traditional short-term diversification of annual crops for the purpose of improving soil fertility and food security is a common practice in Ethiopia. However, the best cropping systems have not been selected yet though field research. Experiments were conducted for two years with an objective of establishing sustained finger millet based short term cropping sequence in two major finger millet producing areas of Ethiopia. The experiments were laid out in a split-plot arrangement with six precursor crops (haricot bean, maize, sweet lupine, niger seed, wheat, and teff) as a main plot factor, where determined residues were retained in the main plot after harvesting and two nitrogen fertilizer levels (30 and 60 kg ha−1) applied for finger millet as sub-plots with three replications. Soil analysis result examined immediately after finger millet harvest showed a significant effect of precursor crops and nitrogen fertilizer rates on soil properties. Planting finger millet following lupine increased the soil organic carbon, total nitrogen and cation exchange capacity by 17.37%, 65.50%, 26.15%, respectively, over planting finger millet following teff. Use of different amount of nitrogen fertilizer likely contributed to observed differences in residual soil nutrients. Accordingly, finger millet following lupine with the addition of 60 kg ha−1 nitrogen fertilizer gave significantly higher finger millet grain yield (3.24 tone ha−1) and relative production (22.37%) and economic (40.7%) efficiency. This system with their high sustainability and multiple benefits can be readily accepted by the farming community.

Genetic variability and character association for bulb yield and yield related traits in garlic in Ethiopia

Garlic (Allium sativum) has for centuries been valued by humans for food, culinary and medicinal purposes world over. The objective of this study was to investigate genetic variability among garlic accessions for yield, yield related and phenology traits in Ethiopia. A field study was conducted at the DebreZeit Agricultural Research Center during 2012, using 49 garlic accessions from the highlands of North Shewa, East and West Arsi, Arsi, Bale and Sidama zones, which are among the major garlic producing areas in Ethiopia. The experiment was arranged in a 7x7 simple Lattice design, with two replications. Accession were highly significant (P < 0.01) for days to maturity, leaf number per plant, neck diameter, yield per plant, biological yield per plant, dry weight above ground, bulb dry weight, dry weight underground, clove number per bulb, and clove weight per bulb. Heritability estimates ranged from 82.48% for clove number, to 6.46% harvest index. High heritability, combined with high genetic advance (as per cent of mean) observed for mean clove number, yield per plant, biological yield per plant and clove weight per plant showed that these characters were controlled by additive gene effects. Thus phenotypic selection for these characters would likely be effective in variety selection and development. Bulb yield per plant had positive and highly significant genotypic and phenotypic correlations, with all characters, except plant height and harvest index. Path analysis at phenotypic level revealed that biological yield and bulb dry weight contributed major positive direct effects to bulb yield per plant. These traits showed positive and highly significant genotypic correlations with bulb yield except harvest index