EVALUATION OF FOOD BARLEY (HORDEUM VULGARE L.) VARIETIES AT HIGHLANDS OF SOUTHWESTERN PART OF ETHIOPIA USING AMMI AND GGE BIPLOT STABILITY MODELS

Abstract

A multi location trial was conducted across the highlands of Southwestern (SW) Ethiopia from
2020 to 2022 during main cropping seasons to evaluate grain yield and yield related traits of food
barley varieties across the different locations to identify and recommend high yielding and stable
food barley varieties to farmers for large scale planting using AMMI and GGE biplot models. A
total of eight food barley varieties were obtained from the Sinana Agricultural Research Center
(SARC) for use in this study. Varieties were evaluated in three environments, over three growing
seasons. The experiments were conducted at Dedo, Yem and Gechi districts of SW part of
Ethiopia during the main cropping seasons. The experiment was laid out in RCBD with three
replications. The experimental plot for each variety consisted of six rows of 2.5m length and
rows were spaced 20cm apart. Spacing between rows, plots and replications 25cm, 30cm and 1m
respectively. Data for all relevant agronomic traits were collected, but only plot yield data
converted to t/ha was subjected to statistical analysis. The combined ANOVA showed highly
significant differences (P<0.001) among E, G and GEI for grain yield. The environmental
variance was more accountable (68.2%) to the total variance as compared to the genetic variance
(3.16%) and the interaction variance (19.13%) for grain yield. Dedo 2022 was the highest
yielding (4.1 t/ha) while Gechi 2022 was the lowest yielding (1.5 t/ha) environment. The mean
grain yield of the varieties across eight environments was 3 t/ha. The GGE biplot identified two
barley growing mega-environments. The first mega environment consisted of environments E5,
E8, E1 with a vertex genotype T4.E6, E4, E3, E2 and E7 were found in the second mega
environment with the winning genotype of T8. It was also noted that no mega-environments fell
into sectors where genotype T2 and T7 were the vertex genotypes, did not fit in any of the megaenvironments. According to both AMMI and GGE biplot analysis, food barley varieties T3, T7
and T5 were found to be benchmarks/ideal genotypes and could be used as checks to evaluate the
performance of other genotypes and also can be recommended for wider cultivation in the
highland environments of Southwestern Ethiopia.