Proceedings of Crops Improvement and Management Research Results 2020/21

Abstract

Agriculture is the backbone of Ethiopian economy contributing for food self- sufficiency, foreign currency earning, supplying raw materials for the emerging agro-processing industries while conserving the ecosystem for sustainable use. In alignment the government policy to transform the agriculture sector the research system has been playing the leading role in generating improved technologies, creating demand for the technologies and supplying start up technologies for targeted beneficiaries. The Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research has made the major contribution and has generated 60% of the improved crop varieties and are among the widely used technologies across regions. In the past two decades agricultural productivity has shown an increasing trend by 5.8% while the global average increment was 1.4%. The increasing uses of improved technologies specifically the use of improved varieties contributing for the increasing crop productivity and production. It is vital to extend the available technologies while generating new technologies addressing the development demand of the country. The crop research directorate is being undertaking research to generate technologies resilient to the changing environments. In this regard, a fifteen years strategy has designed to increase the genetic gain through breeding by 1.5% per annum, and double productivity of the major food security and other economically important crops. In order to achieve these targets modernization of the breeding program is underway to increase efficiency and genetic gain through breeding. This proceeding is the result of the past three years research undertakings of the national programs. In the execution of the research activities the federal and regional research canters and some of the universities have been participated. In this proceeding the major results of the completed research activities of the 2020/21 crop season were published with the aim of sharing the major outputs of the research undertakings to beneficiaries and document the research experiences for future use.The published papers have passed a two-stage review by assigned senior researchers in the respective disciplines and editors who have compiled the proceeding. The papers included in this proceeding were selected based on the contributions to generate appropriate technologies for users, scientific merits and contribution for advancement of scientific research in the country. This proceeding contained 39 articles on breeding of the field and pulse crops, horticultural crops, and crop husbandry. The papers organized into different sections as field crops, horticulture, root and tubers, spices and coffee and tea crops. The authors are recognized for the implementation of the research activities and their commitment in writing the papers as per the standard set initially and incorporation of the comments given by the reviewers for the betterment of the quality of the papers. The contribution of the senior researchers across canters in reviewing the papers was immense and I would like to thank those who have been [v] involved in the review and edition process. The final edition and formatting were done by Dr Fisseha and his team. I would like to extend my thanks for the support and efforts they made in shaping the proceeding to the standard. I believe that the papers included in this document will provide useful information for the scientific community and for other end users.