Quantifying farmers' preferred agronomic traits and participatory bread wheat variety selection

Farmers participatory bread wheat variety selection (PVS) was carried-out at major wheat producing areas of South Wollo, Ethiopia in the 2015 and 2016 cropping seasons. Fifteen recently released bread wheat varieties along with local variety were evaluated for yield and yield-related traits, with the objective of quantifying farmers' preferred agronomic traits and to associate farmers' qualitative selection with conventional breeding evaluation technique. The experiment was laid-out in Randomized Completely Block Design (RCBD) replicated three times, where farmer's field was used as a replication. Prior to evaluating the performance of the tested bread wheat varieties, progressive farmers listed-down and weighed the major farmers' preferred agronomic traits for bread wheat breeding and selection. Accordingly, they identified eight major quantitative and qualitative traits; categorized as cold tolerance, disease tolerance, earliness, kernel color, spike length, spike density, tillering potential and kernel boldness. Cold tolerance, disease tolerance and earliness were identified the major traits that predominantly determines wheat productivity and received 22%, 16% and 13% of farmers’ selection criteria, respectively. Kernel color affects consumers' and market preferences, where white kernelled wheat grains fetch good market price. Thus, kernel color received 13% of farmers’ selection index. On the other hand, spike length, spike density, tillering potential and kernel boldness received 11, 9, 10 and 6% of the farmers' selection index, respectively. Bearing the set traits in mind, farmers evaluated the tested bread wheat varieties at maturity stage. Based on their overall evaluation, farmers preferred Danda'a, Ogolcho and King-bird at Legambo, Wogdie and Borena districts. On the other hand, Hidase was selected at Kelela district out-yielding the rest of the tested varieties. Breeders’ quantitative analysis also confirmed results of farmers' qualitative selection, justifying the presence of farmers' untapped breeding and selection experiences that could be utilized in modern conventional breeding program. Therefore, breeders should involve farmers as main partners in crop breeding and selection program and augment conventional breeding skills with traditional farmers’ knowledge.