Performance of Lentil Varieties at Bule Hora, Southern Ethiopia

Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik) is one of the most important highland food legumes grown in many parts of the world as food crops. It is among dominated legume crops produced in southern Ethiopia including Bule hora districts of West Guji zone. However, shortage of improved lentil varieties that suitable to the existing environment is one of the major production constraints. Consequently, this experiment was conducted to evaluate nine Lentil varieties and recommend suitable lentil varieties for the study areas and similar agro ecologies. Moreover, the field experiment was conducted for three years at Bule hora in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and the varieties were planted in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. All necessary data were collected on yield and yield related traits and summarized on Microsoft excel sprit shit. Combined analysis of variance over three years revealed significant variations among varieties for grain yield, flowering dates, maturity dates and number of seeds per plants. Moreover, Varieties showed a grain yield as high as 1104kg/ha with pooled mean of 894.84kg/ha. Derash (1104kg/ha) variety is relatively high yielding variety followed by Chackol (1099.999kg/ha) with yield advantage of 18.95% and 18.65% over variety mean respectively. Therefore, those two varieties are suggested for commercial production all over the place of the study area and locations with similar agro climate until new high yielder varieties will be developed through breeding program.