Ethiopia: Efforts towards improving sorghum varieties

Date:05-18-2017

Author: Alazar Shiferaw

In Ethiopia, teff, wheat, maize, sorghum and barley are grown on nearly three quarters of the total arable plots of land. The production and productivity of these crops have shown increment due to the implementation of rigorous researches, provision of various inputs, and application of modern agricultural technologies among other things.

Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources held iMashilla final project meeting on which various papers were presented for discussion in Addis. Presenting his paper, 'Screening Technologies for Grain and Injera Quality in the Ethiopian Breeding Programme', Habte Nida from Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) said that to-date all of the information about the relationship between sorghum properties and Injera quality is based on experiments with limited numbers of samples.

He further said that only a small proportion of the genetic variation of sorghum has been evaluated since end-selection for Injera quality in breeding programmes product evaluation is labour intensive and time consuming.

The lack of cheap and high-through put screening methods means that end-product evaluation is only conducted on lines just prior to release and not during the main selection stages of the breeding process. As a result, very little progress is made for improving Injera quality and this causes considerable inefficiencies and loss of opportunity, he said.

The iMashilla project has targeted to produce high through put screening technologies for grain and Injera quality that could be implemented in the Ethiopian breeding programme.

Dr. Taye Tadesse, plant breeder, also said iMashilla project was considered to modernize sorghum research in the country. Specifically, it has been intended to improve and expand new sorghum varieties in rain limited areas of the country using improved technologies. This helps the nation to meet farmers' need of research outputs within short period of time. The project has been implemented for 4 and half years. Early maturing sorghum varieties have a significant importance to resist the EI- Nino effect and climate, according to him.

He further said that the project has registered commendable achievements by shortening the maturing period of sorghum the researchers have used advanced technologies, testing design, statistical among other technologies. The new released varieties have been accepted by the farmers due to their resistance to drought and warm climate. And the demand of these varieties seed has increased from time to time by small-holder farmers in dry lowlands producing sorghum primarily for domestic consumption and biomass. The new varieties grow successfully in East and West Hararge, North Shoa, South and North Wollo, Raya-Alamata, North-west Tigrai and similar agro-ecologies in the southern region.

He added that the project was designed to increase the rate at which the EIAR sorghum breeding programme develops to release varieties for farmers in the dry lowlands, which accounts for more than 60 per cent of sorghum production in Ethiopia.

In January of this year, in his article, 'Improved Sorghum Varieties for Better Livelihood', Dr. Taye said, "Sorghum is considered as one of the potential crop to alleviate the challenges of recurrent drought in Ethiopia."

Since the inception of sorghum research in Ethiopia, considerable achievements have been obtained in developing early maturing and drought resistant sorghum varieties and production managements practices nationally and regionally.

Currently, a total of 20 open pollinated varieties and four hybrids have been registered for production, targeting the dry lowland sorghum growing environments. The released varieties have a yield potential of 40 to 60 quintal per hectare, which are two to three fold higher from the national average yield.

However, there has been limited adoption rate of the improved varieties mainly due to lower biomass production of these varieties in comparison to the land races. In order to address the demand for food, feed and fuel, farmers predominantly prefer to grow the long maturing sorghum land races in the majority of dry lowland sorghum growing areas of the country, which requires more than seven months to reach maturity. Despite the crop failure around Mieso area occurred in the 2015/16 cropping season, the on-farm seed multiplication activity aiming to create access to farmers of the improved varieties accentuated the potential of the improved early types of sorghum varieties and moisture management practices to address food security problem of the area.

According to South African Journal of Plant and Soil, volume 33, 2016, sorghum is one of the most important cereal crops worldwide after wheat, rice, maize and barley. Examining the present socio-economic conditions of sorghum-producing farmers in different agro-ecologies in Ethiopia necessitates implementing strategies for improvement.