Farmers’ perceptions of climate change and its implication on livestock production in mixed-farming system areas of Bale highlands, Southeast Ethiopia; Challenges and extents of Soil and Water Conservation measures in Guba-Lafto Woreda of North Wollo, Ethiopia; Evaluation of milk production performance of lactating Fogera cows fed with urea and effective micro-organisms treated rice straw as basal diet.

E3 Journal of Agricultural Research and Development

E3 Journal of Agricultural Research and Development Vol. 6 (3) pp. 070-074, September 2016; © E3 Journals; ISSN 2276-9897
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18685/EJARD(6)3_EJARD-16-014


Roles of rice FRGS in technology dissemination in Benishangul Gumuz region

Hailemariam Solomon 1
1 Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research E-mail: hailemariamsolomon55@yahoo.com

Accepted 30 June 2016

Abstract

This study focused on the evaluation of upland rice genotypes for yield performance and farmersÍ´ preference criteria under the upland ecosystem. The study was conducted at Bambasi area to identify farmer preferred best performing rice varieties. Four released and one local variety was evaluated under participatory varietal evaluation in upland ecosystem in randomized complete block designs with four replications. Each farmerÍ´s sites were considered as a replication. The number of varieties was decided by farmers to make it easy to evaluate and manage the trials. Prior to the establishment of farmers research group (FRG) the constraints of rice production were identified by prioritized following need assessment studies and participatory rapid appraisal, and the most important bottleneck was found to be lack of improved varieties. The selection criteria set by the farmers were grain yield, plant height, panicle length, tillering capacity and disease resistance. In participatory varietal selections (PVS) of upland ecosystem, farmers were evaluated the performance of rice varieties at three developmental stages namely vegetative, tillering and physiological maturity stage. However, the final selection criteria were set at physiological maturity stage and hence direct matrix and pair wise ranking were carried out for varietal selection. According to direct and pairwise ranking variety of NERICA-4 was the top preferred variety by farmers. For the tested rice varieties, the analysis of variance showed that shorter duration was required for NERICA-4 (130.75 days) whereas longer duration for FKRS variety (147.5 days) for physiological maturity. For grain yield, NERICA-4 (3395 kg/ha) was the highest yielding variety where as the lowest yielding variety was Kokit (2337 kg/ha). The finding of this study revealed that NERICA-4 was farmersÍ´ best preference and top performed variety and hence has to be produced by rice producers. The approach of farmer research group (FRG) based research had a bilateral benefit for researchers and farmers for knowledge and experience sharing. The role of the approach confirmed that FRG was a suitable mechanism for rice technology dissemination among farmers.

Keywords: Ecosystems, Farmer selection, FRG, Participatory varietal selection, NERICA-4, and Yield.

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