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Online ISSN : 2349-8080 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorinchiefijcrbp@gmail.com |
Fruit crops are widely grown in west Hararghe by small households and plays significant role for income generation and nutrition. Plantains are cooking type’s banana producing fruits that remain starchy at maturity and need processing before consumption. Even though the environment is suitable for the production of fruit, the productivity of the crop is highly influenced by low yielding variety and low moisture. Therefore, the trail was conducted to evaluate high yielding, drought and disease resistant/tolerant Plantain types of Banana varieties at Mechara onstation. Four plantain varieties were brought from Melkasa Agricultural Research Center and evaluated for agronomic and yield and yield related traits using Completely Randomized Block Design in three replications. The Analysis of variance results revealed significant variation among plantain varieties for all traits over both harvesting cycles except Fruit diameter (cm), number of fruit per bunch and unmarketable yield. The highest bunch weight, number of hands per bunch, number of fruits per bunch, marketable yield and total yields had recorded from Nijiru variety followed by kardaba. Nijiru variety was resistance to banana disease (sigatoka and panama disease) as compared to the other varieties. Whereas the lowest bunch weight, number of fruits per bunch, marketable yield, total yields was observed from Matokke variety. The Pearson correlation coefficient showed that average bunch weight, Fruit diameter, number of finger per hand and Marketable yield were positively correlated to total yield. It is, therefore, concluded that Nijiru variety was well performed and can be recommended for the growers for Mechara and similar agro ecology of the area.
