Evaluation of finger millet (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn.) Varieties at Different Locations of Southwestern Ethiopia

Abstract

The objectives of this study was (i) to evaluate grain yield of finger millet varieties across different environments at southwestern part of Ethiopia (ii) to identify and recommend varieties with improved yield and stable performance using different stability parameters. Ten finger millet varieties which were for the experiment. The experiment was laid out using Randomized Complete Block Design with four replications in all testing sites. The plot size was four harvestable rows and spacing between rows was 40cm with the length of 5m long. All management practices such as cultivation, fertilization and weeding were done based on the recommendations for each test sites. Data for all relevant agronomic traits were collected, but only plot yield data converted to qt/ha was subjected to statistical analysis. Result Revealed that the combined ANOVA for grain yield revealed highly significant (p<0.01) variations  among the genotypes, environments and GEI. The total variation explained was 78.7% for environment,1.5% for genotype and 9.8% for GEI. Several univariate and AMMI model were used to identify high yielding and stable varieties. The most stable finger millet varieties according to the eco-valence method were G10, G3,G7 and G8.Lin and Binns cultivar superiority measure (Pi) the most stable varieties were G7, G5,G4 and G1. According to the stability variance, the most stable varieties were G2, G4, G1 and G10.Francis and Kannenberg (CV) identified varieties G4, G10, G2,G3 and G7 as stable. In AMMI analysis, the first two IPCAs were highly significant and captured 76.1% of GEI of variance. AMMI analysis identified variety Gudetu as high yielding and stable variety. BD19 and OM19 were close to the origin and contributed less to the GEI, considered as relatively high yielding and stable environments. In conclusion, variety G7 and G4 could be suggested to be stable and high yielding than others and relatively low contribution to GEI. Therefore, these varieties were recommended for commercial use at different locations of Southwestern Ethiopia.