Evaluation of Drought Tolerant Maize Varieties (Zea mays L.) For Low Land of Guji Zone, Southern Oromia, Ethiopia

Kabna Asefa Kusa, Seyoum Alemu and Girma Teshome

Background and Objective: Maize is one of the most cultivated and used as a staple food crop in Ethiopia and its production is constrained by many challenges such as the lack of improved maize variety is highly limited in different parts of Ethiopia due to the inaccessibility of different production factors. The lowlands of Guji Zone is one such area where the technologies are not been widely addressed and adopted so far. Hence, this study was conducted by Bore agricultural research centre to select and recommend adaptable high yielding and early maturing maize varieties for low land agro-ecologies of the Guji Zone. Materials and Methods: The experiment was done at lowland parts of three districts Adola, Wadera and Liben. Seven released maize varieties with one local check were used. RCBD experimental design with three replications was used on a plot size of 3×3.75 m. All phonological and yield data were collected subjected to analysis using GenStat (18th edition) software. Combined data analysis was used to test the performance of the varieties across the testing locations. Results: The result of the study shows that all varieties revealed a significant difference for the selected characters across the locations. Based on the obtained result, two maize varieties (Melkassa 07 and 03) were early maturing and gave higher yields. Conclusion: Therefore, these varieties are recommended for demonstration and popularization in the study area and similar agro-ecology of the zone. But the further study should be carried out including several recently released maize varieties for improved maize production.

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