Teff is one of the most important crops for farm income and food security in Ethiopia. Despite the importance of teff in Ethiopia, yields are remarkably low mainly due to low adoption of improved agricultural technologies. Technical knowledge is not only valuable as an outcome impact indicator but could also serve as a reasonably reliable predictor of the adoption of management practices, particularly for crops and technologies where there is a relatively long-time lag between adoption and impact. Therefore, this study was carried out during 2016-17 to assess the knowledge of farmers on improved production practices of teff. The study used both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Cross sectional survey research design was employed to collect data. Chaliya district was purposively selected because this district has only 46 ha under improved practices out of 6815 ha of land under teff cultivation, which is very low when compared with the other 18 districts of West Shoa zone. By using Probability Proportional to Size (PPS) and random sampling technique, 239 respondents were selected from the eight villages. The data were collected using well-structured interview schedule, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. The collected data were analysed using descriptive statistical tests. The findings revealed that majority of the respondents had no knowledge on row planting/ sowing, transplanting, stages of application of Urea, optimum depth at which fertilizer is to be applied and quantity of Urea to be applied at each stage. Therefore, it is very much imperative to educate the farmers on row planting, transplanting and urea application. The extension agency must formulate the extension messages on the knowledge component of row planting, transplanting and fertilizer application while transferring the know-how.

Information is power only when used and applied. Farm Management Information Systems in agriculture have evolved from simple farm recordkeeping into sophisticated and complex systems to support production management. African agriculture is largely traditional and practised by smallholders and pastoralists, predominantly rain-fed, has low-yielding production, and lacks access to critical information, market facilitation, and financial intermediation services. The role that Information Communication Technologies (ICT) can play in addressing these challenges is increasing. Mobile technology, on the other hand, is increasingly being adopted as the technology of choice for delivery of ICT services and solutions. New applications present an opportunity like no other to revolutionize life for farmers. The mobile is not only a communication tool, in future, it will be an important agricultural tool for the farmers. Most mobile applications focus on improving agriculture and have a wide range of functions, such as providing market information, increasing access to extension services, and facilitating market links. For extension workers, it is an additional tool in their kit in the technology transfer. For scientists, it acts as a readily available reference on demand and for students in agriculture, it acts as a learning tool. Mobile application for pest and disease management of crops is an application that allows farmers to identify pests and diseases using their mobile phones and provides remedial measures is the latest addition to using modern digital tools to benefit smallholder farmers. Ethiopia is the largest wheat producer in Sub-Saharan Africa. Wheat is the 4 th important cereal crop in the country. Although Ethiopia is the largest wheat producer in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is reliant on foreign wheat imports to satisfy its annual domestic demand. Considering its importance, and also in recent years the crop was affected by rust disease and incurred significant economic loss, wheat crop was selected for this pilot study. Keeping this in to consideration, the mobile application namely, m-WHEAT, was developed, as a pests and diseases diagnostic tool for major pests and diseases of Wheat crop in Ethiopia. The application is developed using android with the help of Extensible Markup Language (XML) for encoding documents in machine-readable form and includes java development tools. The XML based user interface with Java programming in Android SDK is developed to present pests and diseases of wheat and its control measures.

Women rarely participate in extension services and have little contact with extension service organizations. Increasing extension service to female farmers in rural areas of Ethiopia remains challenging. Reports say that there is low participation of women vegetable farmers in agricultural extension services in Toke-Kutayedistrict, Oromia region, Ethiopia.Therefore, this study seeks to assess the factors influencing rural women participation in agricultural extension services employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Out of the 132 women vegetable producers selected for this study, there were 79 participants and 53 non-participants of agricultural extension services. Quantitative data from primary sources were collected using a semi-structured interview schedule. Qualitative data were collected through key informant interviews and focus group discussions.The results of the Binary Logit regression model estimate indicate that out of the 16 explanatory variables included in the model, farming experience, sex of development agent, irrigable land holding size and access to credit shows significant and positive relation with participation whereas, time spent on domestic activities, distance from water source, mobility constraints and sex of household headship shows significant and negative relationship with women participation.