Performance evaluation of bread wheat varieties

Abstract

Bread wheat is one of the most staple food crops in the world and one of the most important cereals cultivated in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is the largest wheat producer in sub-Saharan Africa with 1.1 million hectares (ha) of cultivated land Participatory varietal evaluation and selection is being conducted for many crops such as rice (Sthapit et al., 1996), common bean (Kornegay et al., 1996) and barley (Ceccarelli and Grando, 2007; Fufa et al., 2010). Courtois et al. (2001) evaluated the effect of participation by farmers by comparing only the rankings of varieties by farmers and breeders at the same locations; they reported a strong concordance between farmers and breeders in environments that have been producing contrasting plant phenotypic performance in rice. Farmers’ selection criteria vary with environmental conditions, traits of interest, ease of cultural practice, processing, use and marketability of the product and ceremonial and religious values. Creating an option and access to farmers in vertisol was the priority of this research.