Performance Evaluation of Tef [<i>Eragrostis tef</i> (Zucc.)Trotter] Genotypes for the Non-traditionally Tef Growing Area, Western Ethiopia

Abstract

Cereal is very important crop for human consumption in the world. Among the cereal crops, tef is one of the most popular and staple crop that originated and highly diversified in Ethiopia. The demand is very high in the country, and it needs production expansion to the area where tef is not primary grown. The current study was consists of forty-nine tef genotypes were conducted by using simple lattice design at Assosa, Western Ethiopia for two consecutive cropping seasons (2016 and 2017) to evaluate the performance of tef genotypes for the non-traditional tef growing area particularly Assosa, Ethiopia. The analysis of variance indicated that there was high (p ≤ 0.01) significant difference among tested tef genotypes for days to heading, plant height, panicle length, culm length, grain yield, and harvest index. From the mean performance of genotypes, the maximum grain yield of 14.70 kg ha-1 , 14.33 kg ha-1 , 13.49 kg ha-1 , and 13.31 kg ha-1 were obtained from G-12, G-1, G-37 and G-19. These genotypes were showed superior performance in grain yield and they could be recommended for further evaluating under the next breeding phase of variety trail.