Bridging Yield Gap in Food Barley Crop Production: Evidence from Large Scale Demonstration in Central Highland of Ethiopia

Barley (Hordeum vulgare) is an important food crop in the highland parts of Ethiopia. The main purpose of this activity is to demonstrate improved food barley technology through a cluster based crop production approach. Sites and farmers are selected purposively from the major food barley producing areas of West, and North Shewa, zones of Oromia. About 182 participant smallholder farmers are involved through clustering their farm fields. In this study, one popular food barley variety (HB1307) with its recommendation packages is used for demonstration purpose. Accordingly, a total of 113 hectares of land with 15.65 ton of seed of food barley is covered. The quantitative and qualitative data are collected using participatory rural appraisal tools. The yield data are collected from the entire participants of the cluster and analyzed by simple descriptive statistics. Generally, the variety (HB 1307) demonstrated is found it acceptable by farmers in field visits and field days because of its resistance to disease, adaptation, and productivity. Moreover, the finding of the three years demonstration result revealed that the full package food barley variety (HB1307) demonstration through cluster approach has higher grain yield than the national and regional average recorded in the season. Therefore, the best-performing variety of food barley in the study area is HB1307, based on the data. Thus, improved variety with recommended production packages should be further scale out in the study area and similar agro-ecology using cluster farming approach.