Abstract

Rice is one of the most important cereal crops in Ethiopia. The major challenges in improving food security are to develop varieties that are adapted to specific environment and farmer’s needs. This study was designed to know farmers criteria to select improved upland rice varieties and rank varieties based on their selection criteria for adoption. To take the view and preference of various stakeholder’s participatory variety selection approach was applied. The experiment was conducted using mother-baby trails. In the mother trail un-replicated complete block design in five farmers field were used and each farm was considered as un-replicated block. The analysis of variance revealed significant differences (P ≤ 0.05 or P ≤ 0.01) among varieties for all of the studied traits, except for days to 85% maturity. High grain yield was obtained from Hiddassie (5709 kgha-1), SUPERICA-1 (5351 kgha-1) and Fogera-1 (5313 kgha- 1). Farmers listed out many selection criteria to select varieties for production viz., grain yield, panicle length, effective tillers and disease resistance (blast and brown spot). Similarly, traders mentioned seed color, seed size and market demand as variety selection criteria. The results of direct matrix ranking showed that varieties SUPERICA-1 ranked first followed by Hiddassie and Fogera-1 on the basis of all criteria listed by the participants. Farmers will be benefited by growing varieties selected as per their selection criteria. Therefore, for the study areas these three varieties are recommended for production with their production packages

Keywords: Direct matrix ranking; Participatory variety selection; Upland rice (Oryza Sativa L.)