Horticulture Sector in Ethiopia-Achievements, Challenges and Future Prospects

Abstract

Ethiopia is a country with great variety of climate and soil types that can grow diversity of horticultural crops for home consumption and foreign markets. Horticultural crops are rich in different nutrients that contribute to a major portion to an Ethiopian daily dish mix. The horticulture sectors play a significant role in developing country like Ethiopia both in income and social spheres for improving income and nutrition status. Horticultural crops help in maintaining ecological balance due to their high diversity, and also provide employment opportunities as their management being labor intensive. Therefore production of these commodities should be encouraged in labor abundant and capital scarce countries like Ethiopia. Ethiopia is blessed with a favorable climate and vast land, water and labor resources which together make it an incredible investment hub. Due to these facts, the horticulture sector has shown a very dramatic growth in the country. In recent decades, rapid growth in Fruits and Vegetables, Floriculture, Spice and Herb and in Aromatic, Medicinal and Biofuel Sector has been recorded. According to recent reports, one fifth of the foreign income is come from horticulture sector in Ethiopia. Basing the importance of the sector, significant amount of developmental and research efforts have been made to enhance the quantity and quality of horticultural products. Therefore this paper is intend to review, the development, and research efforts made so far, their achievements, challenges and opportunities of the horticulture sector in Ethiopia.