Pre-extension Demonstration and Evaluation of Improved Lentil Technologies in Bale and East Bale Zones, Southeastern Oromiya, Ethiopia

Lentil is one of the most important food legumes consumed widely throughout the world. It has a significant untapped potential to meet, at least partially, nutritional, soil fertility, and income requirements of smallholder farmers of Ethiopia. However, lentil production faces numerous constraints such as lack of improved seed in the country. Hence, development and dissemination of improved lentil varieties with its packages is an important task to overcome this problem. This activity was undertaken with the main objective of demonstrating and evaluating recently released Lentil technology under farmers’ management condition in Goro district of Bale Zone and Gindhir district of East Bale zone. Two kebeles from each district and two farmers from each kebele were selected. An improved variety Debine was demonstrated and compared with Asano (standard check) on farmers’ field. The demonstration was laid out on single plot of 10m x 10m areas for each variety by applying the recommended full packages. Yield data on plot base was recorded and analyzed using descriptive statistics while farmers’ preference to the varietal attributes was identified and ranked using pairwise ranking and simple ranking methods. Mini-field day was organized in each kebele to facilitate the way in which experts and farmers can participate in varietal evaluation and selection based on their selection criteria. The average yield of Debine (1743kg/ha) is higher than Asano (1400kg/ha). Furthermore, farmers selected Debine due to its higher number of branch/plant, higher number of pod/branch, high yielder, better adaptable to environment, better drought tolerant, better plant height, and better tolerant to frost. Thus, Debine is recommended for wider scaling up/out activity in the districts.