Participatory Variety Selection of Potato (Solanum tubersom L) Varieties at Wondo Genet and Wondo Woredas

The experiment was conducted during 2019 and 2020 growing seasons at wondogenet and wondo. Six potato varieties were tested using randomized complete block design with three replications using mother-baby trial approach. All necessarily data were collected from the mother trial and analyzed using SAS software and SPSS. The combined analysis of variance showed the presence of significant differences (p≤0.05) among tested varieties for plant height, tuber diameter and tuber yield per hectare. The highest tuber weight per plant was harvested from Gudane variety (1.68) which was statistically similar with Jalene (1.49) variety but Dagim variety was gave the lowest (0.30) which was statistically similar with Gera (0.75) variety. Gudane variety gave the highest tuber yield per hectare (33.67) which had no statistically difference with the yield obtained from Jalene variety (30.67) while the lowest (14.05) was recorded from Dagim variety. The participated farmers have given a rank for the traits used for selection and evaluated the varieties using their own selection criterias. As a result, based on their preferences Gudane, Jalene and Guassa varieties were selected as the first, second and third choices. Therefore, scaling up of these selected varieties should be done in the study area and areas with similar agroecologies so that producers can able to access the variety to the farmers resulted in overcoming food insecurity.