Pre-Extension Demonstration of Improved Tef Varieties in the Potential Growing Areas of West Shewa Zones of Oromia Regional, Ethiopia

: This research activity was conducted in Ejere, EjersaLefo and Dendi districts of west Shewa zone Oromia with the objective of demonstrating the newly released teff variety Ebba and Niguse with standard check Dagime to the farming community in these districts. These districts and three Kebeles from each district were purposively selected based on accessibility and potentiality for teff production. After selecting farmers training was provided across the districts. Then after, two variety, Ebba and Niguse (a newly released variety) as well as Dagime (as standard checks) were planted on 20m*15m adjacent plots on 6 farmers’ and 3FTC field. All recommended agronomic practices were equally applied to all the plots. At maturity, the varieties were jointly evaluated with a team composed of researchers, Farmers and DAs. Despite the slight difference in criteria set by farmer’s plant height, disease tolerance, lodging resistance, Tilering ability, seed color, seed size, early maturity, straw yield, grain yield, were the common selection criteria across all locations. Ebba exceed the standard checks and has met the criteria of the farmers. With regard to yield, 22 qt/ha, 20.03 qt/ha and 18.33qt/ha were obtained from Ebba, Niguse and Dagime; respectively putting Ebba on the first rank. Ebba gave yield advantage of 3.67qt/ha and 16.68% yield increment over the standard cheek Dagime. The net benefits that were obtained from Ebba, Niguse and standard cheek Dagime were 67619.15ETB, 59969.15ETB and 63969.15ETB respectively. As the variety Ebba has met the intended criteria of the farmers, hence Based on these result obtained fact, Ebba variety with recommended input was recommended for further scale up and scale out for demonstration districts and other similar areas.


INTRODUCTION
cultivated in most of the agro ecological zones of Ethiopia Ethiopia's agriculture creates 46 percent of gross million hectares of land were covered by Tef in the national production, employs 85 percent of its population 2020/21 cropping season.From this, 55.09 million quintals and creates 75 percent of export commodity value [1].
production was produced.At the country level, Tef Despite its large scale, the agricultural sector is largely contributes 22.56% for the total cultivated cereal crops dependent on smallholder subsistence farms burdened by and 16.12% for the total production in the 2020/21 reliance on erratic rain-fed systems.In all, smallholder cropping season.farmers accounted for 96 percent of the total area Ethiopian farmers grow tef for different purpose, cultivated [2].Cereals are the major food crops both in which mainly attributed to the socio-economic, cultural terms of the area they are planted and volume of and agronomic benefits [4].Teff is a highly valued crop production obtained in Ethiopia.It contributes 81.19% and is primarily grown for its grain that is used for and 88.36% in acreage and production for total preparing injera, which is a staple and very popular food crops, respectively, in the 2020/21 cropping season [3].
in the national diet of Ethiopians.It can also be used in Tef (Eragrostis tef) is a major cereal crop and extensively many other food products such as kitta, anebaberro, and Eritrea (A Miretu.2020).In Ethiopia, a total of 2.9 porridge and alcoholic beverage such as tella and katikala MATERIALS AND METHODS [5].In addition, its high price in the market, reduction of post-harvest management cost, fewer disease and pest problems and sustained demand from consumer, are some of the specific merits that makes teff important and preferred by farmers [4] The wide-scale cultivation of teff is related to its tolerance to diverse environmental constraints, which include both excess and scarce soil moisture.In addition to being nutritious, tef grains are free of gluten [6] a causal agent for celiac disease; and hence teff is becoming globally popular as a life-style crop [7].Despite these agronomical and nutritional benefits of tef, both the total production and productivity of teff is relatively low.The main reasons for inferior yield of teff are suboptimal genetic gain, low access to seeds of improved varieties, poor agronomic practices and lodging [5] Although 42 improved teff varieties have been released by the National Research System in Ethiopia [8], their adoption by farmers is low [9].The central issue of applying the latest agricultural technology and/or innovation lies not only on the improvement of farm performances but also on the impact of technology on social and economic conditions of rural households and on the promotion of land and labor productivity in agricultural sector In the oromiya region of Ethiopia total of 1.4 million hectares of land were covered by teff in the 2018/19 cropping season.From this, 26.9 million quintals production was produced.At the regional level and 6.86 million rural households of Ethiopia were engaged in Teff cultivation [10] In West Showa Zone, teff is the main crop produced by the majority of smallholder farmers.Usually, the crop is sown in this area early July up to end of this month and November -December harvested.The crop is produced for both household consumption and cash crop.In this area the straw of teff is also used for construction of house and used as the main feed resource for cattle.Despite the yield of the crop is low in the area of West Shoa Zone due to lack of improved seed and low application of the recommended packages of teff.To overcome these problems demonstration of improved teff variety was initiated.
Therefore, this study was proposed with an objective of demonstrating and promoting improved variety of teff, evaluating the performance of improved teff variety along with management practices under farmers' perception and to enhance awareness of farmers about newly released teff variety in the study area.

Description of the Study Areas:
The demonstration was conducted at Ejere, EjersaLefo and Dendi districts of West Shoa Zone for two consecutive cropping seasons.Ejere district is located in Oromia Regional State, West Shoa Zone, with the capital located at 50 km west of Addis Ababa.The altitude of the district varies from 2,060 meters to 3,185 meters above sea level.It receives an annual rainfall of 900-1,200 mm and has an annual temperature range of 90c-180c.The district has two agro-ecologies which are Dega (45%) and Weina Dega (55%) which implies highland and midland respectively [11].Second district Ejersa Lafo district land use types showed 70.19% arable land, 18.5 % grazing land, 9.4% forest land and 1.9% others.The mean average temperature of the area was 19.67°C and the minimum and maximum temperature 5.4°C and 26.41°C, respectively.The mean annual rainfall is between 750-1170 mm.The major crops produced are teff, wheat, barley, maize and sorghum, chickpea, horticultural crops, vegetables, root crops, pulses and oilseeds [12], while Dendi is one of district part of the West Shoa Zone.The annual rainfall of district 1078mm/year and altitude 2278m.a.s.lIt has a mean maximum and minimum temperature ranges of 10°C and 24°C respectively.Major areas of district soil type Vertisol/silt soil with deep black and certain areas brown color [13].

Site and Farmers Selection:
Purposive sample selection procedure was employed Site and farmers selection was done in participatory way with district Agricultural Office and experts working on cereal production.Accordingly, three district and three Kebeles from each district were purposively selected based on potential production of teff among others.Similarly, farmers selection were done with collaboration of agricultural Office experts and Developmental Agent by considering different selection criteria's like farmers interest to the technology, model farmers and managing the field as required.Accordingly, a total of six (6) farmers and three (3) FTC were selected from three districts (two farmers and one FTC from each kebele).
Planting Materials and Design Used: Two recently released tef variety (Ebba and Niguse) with one standard check (Dagime) were planted on selected farmers' land with simple plot design (15m x 20m) for each variety in the main cropping season.Full packages were applied in which row planting with the spacing of 20cm between rows; recommended seed rate of 15kg per hectare and fertilizer rate of 65.4kgNPS and 158kg UREA per hectare Yield advantage was also calculated as: was applied.In addition, twice hand weeding was done on time (i.e. the first weeding one month after planting and the second weeding was done one month later after of the first weeding).The collected qualitative data was analyzed and described using descriptive statistics such as mean, tables and percentages.Also quantitative data collected were subjected to SPSS software to analyses mean, standard deviation.Besides ranking scale was used to evaluate and select best bet varieties and to rank their criteria according to real situation of the area.According to [14] Yield advantage and % increment were calculated using the following formula.

Yield of new variety -Yield of standard check
Yield advantage % = Yield of new variety -Yield of standard check X 100 Yield of new variety

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Participatory Variety Evaluation and Selection: At maturity, the varieties were evaluated based on the farmerswere assisted to jot their own evaluation criteria, which then be ordered using score ranking technique.Each variety was evaluated against the criteria ordered based on the weight attached to each parameter.At the end of the evaluation process, result of the evaluation was displayed to the evaluators and discussion was made on the way ahead.To this end Farmers scored each variety for individual traits considered important by them and ranking of varieties were done on a scale of 1-5 (5= excellent value 4= very good value 3= good value 2= poor value 1= very poor)  Accordingly; yield, disease tolerant, tillering On-farm Yield Performance: The result of teff variety capacity, seed color, early maturity and other traits were demonstration revealed that, the newly released Ebba and considered as the most selection criteria for each teff Niguse variety performed better than the standard check variety.Based on overall mean score, the best preferred Dagime variety at all demonstration sites.Accordingly, variety was evaluated and ranked.Hence, Ebba was the combined mean analysis result on mean yield selected by all its traits including yield followed by performances of the varieties demonstrated is Niguse summarized in the table below (Table 2).Accordingly; Collection and Analysis: Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected.The collected data were: agronomic data (yield data), total number of farmers and other stakeholders participated in field visits and field days, total number of farmers and other stakeholders participated in training and farmers perception on the attribute of the technology.

Table 1 :
Score ranking of teff variety by farmers across the districts Varsities Plant height Early maturity Disease Resistant Lodging Resistant Tillering ability Seed size Seed Colure Threshing ability Grain Yield Straw Yield Total Scour Rank

Table 2 :
Mean yield of teff varieties across the districts

Table 3 :
Yield advantage of newly released teff varieties over the standard check

Table 4 :
Cost benefit analysis Varieties farmers became aware of the 7. Provost, C. and E. Jobson, 2014.Move over quinoa, importance and quality of technologies as compared to Ethiopia's teff poised to be next big super grain.the standard cheek.The demand for the variety was also The Guardian, January 23.created.Demonstration result showed that the Ebba 8. MoANR, 2017.Ministry of Agriculture and Natural variety was recorded high yielder than Niguse and Resources, Plant Variety Release, Protection and Dagime at all location.It was also preferred by participant Seed Quality Control Directorate, Crop Variety farmers for its better agronomic performance.On the Register, Issue No. 20, June 2017, Addis Ababa, other hand Cost benefit analysis also indicated that Ebba Ethiopia.variety had a better benefit than the other varieties that 9. Kebebew, 2017.Teff, Eragrostistef (Zucc.)Trotter.were demonstrated.Based on these facts, Ebba variety In: Patil JV (ed) Millets and Sorghum: Biological and was recommended for further scale up and scale out for Genetic Improvement).Wiley Black Well Publisher.demo districts and other similar areas.10.Miretu, A. and L. Abebaw, 2020.Scale-wide