Chickpea participatory variety selection for the vertisol of the watershed

Abstract

Chickpea is one of the most important food grains in the diets of Ethiopian
people. Ethiopia is the largest producer of chickpea in Africa, and the sixth
largest producer in the world, with over 200,000 hectares under cultivation
and annual production of 4 million quintals (CSA, 2011). The crop is propoor
in that it has high potential for improving the livelihoods of the rural poor
in Ethiopia. It is an important source of protein in the people’s diet, an important
rotation crop to improve soil fertility and it is also an important cash source.
Similarly, chickpea is the main leguminous crop widely produced in the
watershed. However, farmers grow traditional, low-yielding and disease- and
pest-susceptible varieties, despite the fact that several high yielding, diseaseresistant,
pest-resistant and drought-tolerant varieties have been developed
by the National Agricultural Research System (NARS) and the International
Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). The local
varieties are low yielding and susceptible to wilt; so introducing high-yielding
and adaptable improved chickpea varieties would increase farmers’ productivity
and thus their livelihoods. Therefore, an experiment on participatory selection
of chickpea varieties was conducted with the objectives of selecting adaptive
and high-yielding improved chickpea varieties through farmers’ participation
and evaluating the effect of rhizobium inoculation on the productivity of
chickpea