Rice Research: Open Access
Open Access

Rice is not only food securing crop but also a source of employment and income source for youths in most rice producing areas of the country. The country has a huge potential of land for rice production in three ecosystems, upland, irrigated and rain fed lowland. Now a day’s the production and productivity of rice has been expanding throughout the country. The production has been increased from 11,244.3 tons in 2007 to 126,806.4 tons in 2016 [1]. Even though there is an increment in the production, the imports are also increasing from year to year. From 2008 to 2016 the imported rice had increased from 225,000 quintal to 3,118,270 quintal and causes more than 170 US dollars. This indicates the increasing demand of rice from year to year in the country.

Variety by location and variety by year were non-significant for panicle length and suggesting that the stability of the varieties across locations and years [2]. The interaction of variety by location by year was highly significant for days of heading, days of maturity, plant height, grain yield and thousand seed weight while panicle length and number of filled grains per panicle were not significant for this interaction.

Grain yield is the most important economic trait in most crop improvement programs. The highest grain yield was recorded for Ediget and Fogera-2 while the low grain yield was recorded on X-Jigna. This is due to the long age of the variety under production.

The average maturity days for the variety were 88 days; Fogera-2 and Gumara were the late maturing varieties and Hiber and Ediget were early maturing. Variety Fogera-2 had high number of filled grains per panicle and grain yield [3]. However, variety Ediget was the best variety across locations and year interms of number of filled grains per panicle and grain yield per hectre with high thousand seed weight.

Even though there is huge potential and increasing demand of the crop, lack of high yielding varieties, terminal moisture stress and low soil fertility, disease and cold effect are the constraints that hinders the expansion and productivity of the crop. Rice production is a recent phenomenon in Ethiopia, as compared to other cereals crops. It had been introduced by in 1960s at Fogera and Gambela areas through North Korean and Dutch people respectively [4].

Even though there is huge potential and increasing demand of the crop, lack of high yielding varieties, terminal moisture stress and low soil fertility, disease and cold effect are the constraints that hinders the expansion and productivity of the crop. One of the major constraints in rice producing areas is lack of adaptable and high yielding improved rice varieties [5]. So far eleven improved lowland rice varieties had been released in Ethiopia.

However, cultivation of improved lowland varieties in most rice growing is limited, due to unavailability of adaptable rice varieties. Farmers grow old rice varieties venerable to disease and ends with low productivity. Therefore, this study was designed to select adapted and high yielding lowland rice varieties in the testing rice producing areas.

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