Information on the diversity of landraces, cultivation practices, and feeding habits is necessary to improve the crops through selection and/or hybridization. This study was conducted to generate information to document cropping practices, values, and socio-cultural aspects of fenugreek. A study was conducted in five districts of Oromia and one yem special districts at Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Regional States, and data were collected using structured and semi-structured interviews from 144 general and 24 key informants. Assessment of data was conducted through interviews with informants regarding cropping systems of the specific landraces, plant nomenclature of traditional landraces, distinctive criteria of each landrace, and use of fenugreek. R software version 4.1.2 and MS Excel 2010 were used to analyze qualitative data, quantify, sort, determine proportions and draw figures, percentages, means, and tables. The result indicated that Hulbata guracha and Hulbata Dima in Eastern Hararghe and Abesha abish and Orome abish in Yem Special district were reported as popular farmers’ cultivars. The farmers named the cultivars mainly based on seed color, seed source, and taste. Sole cropping of fenugreek was more common in Yem special district (65.3%), whereas intercropping with sorghum and Catha edulis (khat) was common in East Hararghe (27.3%) and crop rotation was practiced in both East Hararghe (97.2%) and Yem especial district (88.8%). The farmers in the study area use fenugreek mainly as food in East Hararghe (100%) while in Yem special district used mainly as a spice (100%). This is due to socio-cultural and knowledge differences on the importance of fenugreek in the study area that influence feeding habits, cultivation practice, and uses.

Information on the diversity of landraces is necessary to improve crops through selection or hybridization. This study was conducted to show the diversity of fenugreek landraces and associated traits. A total of 160 accessions including one local and four improved standard checks were evaluated in an augmented block design at the Haramaya University research site in 2016. Data collected include days to flowering, days to maturity, seed yield (kg/ha), thousand seed weight (g), the number of primary branches, plant height at flowering (cm), the number of pods per plant, the number of secondary branches, average pod length (cm), the number of seeds per pod, and seed yield per plant (g/plant) of quantitative traits. The analysis of variance revealed the existence of significant differences between accessions of all parameters. Genotypic and phenotypic coefficients of variation departed from 5.95–56.91% and 6.47–58.88%. Heritability in the broad sense and expected genetic gain as percent mean varied from 60.9 to 96.1% and from 2.5 to 70.3%. The seed yield per plant, the number of secondary branches, and the number of pod per plant had positive direct effects on the yield at both genotypic and phenotypic levels and the number of primary branches, and the average pod length via seed yield per plant, while the number of seeds per plant through the number of primary branches and the number of pods per plant had a positive indirect effect on the yield at the genotypic level, suggesting that these traits could be considered for indirect selection of genotypes for yield. The genetic distances of genotypes measured by Euclidean distance ranged from 0.07 to 10.6, and the dendrogram was constructed by using the unweighted pair group method using arithmetic mean. The presence of variability among fenugreek accessions suggested possibilities to improve the crop through the crossing of distant genotypes. This was an excellent opportunity to contribute to farmers’ food security and livelihoods by bringing about the improvement of fenugreek.