Dryland and irrigated maize

Eight open pollinated (OPVs) and four hybrids (conventional and quality protein maize) have been released by maize project for commercial production in drought stress areas of Ethiopia (Table 2). All of these cultivars were primarily selected from introductions from CIMMYT. The project is discharging the research of maize those are performing the best under rainfed and irrigated conditions.

Open-pollinated varieties and hybrid released for rain-fed production from Bako National Maize Research Center and MARC were tested under furrow irrigation across locations. As a result, nine OPVs and five hybrids were recommended to be produced under irrigation. Several research findings and guidelines have been published on different publications.

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*Melkassa1Q is converted from Melkassa1 through back-cross breeding †QPM = Quality Protein Maize Variety Read More

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Collection of maize germplasm adapted to drought stress environments was started by ACA from farmers in drought prone areas of Ethiopia, other breeding programs in the country, universities and plant genetic resource center (PGRC) of Ethiopia. ACA also acquired germplasm from international research centers like CIMMYT and IITA and other national breeding programs in Africa, USA, Yugoslavia, India and France (Hussein Mohammed and Kebede Mulatu 1993). The DIME project based at MARC used ACA’s collections, varieties and introductions (from CIMMYT drought tolerant breeding network, FAO and other African countries like Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Burkina Faso) for variety development program. As exchange of germplasm among national systems became more and more restrictive, the program mainly obtained germplasm only from CIMMYT centers in Mexico, Zimbabwe and Kenya, IITA and FAO. Read More

Development of hybrid varieties

Until recently, the strategy used for the development of inbred lines at MARC was introduction of segregating S2 and S3 generations from CIMMYT-Kenya and Zimbabwe. The introduced early generation inbred lines had been advanced to subsequent inbreeding stages until they were fixed, mostly until S7 stage. Pedigree breeding method was employed for inbred line development selecting ear to row families for overall plant appearance, disease reaction and pest tolerance as well as for plant and ear aspects.

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