Performance evaluation of released bread wheat varieties at mid altitude areas of Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the most important cereal occupying a protruding position among major food crops in the world in terms of acreage and production and is an important cereal crop which is receives the most attention of specialists in plant breeding and production in the world wide in general and in Ethiopia in particular. And also a number of improved bread wheat varieties have been released by different research centres for different agro-ecology in Ethiopia. Evaluate the performance of different bread wheat varieties at diverse agro-ecology is an important for effective selection of the variety. This experiment was conducted on ten bread wheat varieties against local check (Digalu) at Meskan and Dalocha wereda with the objective of identify and recommend high performance in terms of yield, insect pest tolerant, and stable varieties. The varieties were assigned in randomized complete block design with four replication. Data were collected on six major agronomic traits. Based on the mean separation, the highest average grain yield was recorded from Hidasse and Ogolcho varieties with 5210 and 5080 kg/ha respectively. However the lowest average yield (3220kg/ha) was recorded from Digalu variety. In both locations Digalu variety provided the lowest yield due to high susceptibility for stem rust. Statistically, the variety Hidasse gave the highest number of tillers per plant and the tallest spikes length at both locations those are positive contributions to grain yield. There were significantly positive and negative correlations between traits. In this study, it is found that there is 38.19% increment of yield for using Hidasse variety (high yielder) as compared to Digalu variety (low yielder) at the study area. Therefore, farmers located at the study areas are recommended to use Hidasse variety to increase bread wheat yield.