Genetic erosion of barley in North Shewa Zone of Oromiya Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

This study was conducted during the cropping season of 2010 at Degem wereda. The objectives were to assess the extent of genetic erosion of barley and justify reasons for its conservation at community and household levels. Formal and informal surveys were made aimed at assessing causes for genetic erosion and quantify the level of genetic erosion. Collected data were subjected to descriptive statistics; Chi-square test and relative regression analysis and analyzed with SPSS software version 15. Accordingly, 17 farmers' variety (FV's) were grown before 1994 and during 2010 only 5 FV's (35%) were grown. The estimated loss accounts for 65%. The major causes for genetic erosion were introduction of improved varieties, replacement of other crops, weather variability, and change in land use pattern and lack of policy support (76, 14, 14, 8, 13 and 90%, respectively). Moreover, socio-economic factors affected genetic erosion and statistically and highly significant at p<0.001 for Chi-square and at p<0.05 for regression analysis. Wealth of traditional sayings, poems and songs gave a picture of the importance of barley in society's daily life. Therefore, attention should be given to conservation of farmers' varieties. Involving farmers' participation is very important in order to use their indigenous knowledge for conservation of FVs', varieties end-use and share their socio-cultural preferences. On farm conservation strategies should be practiced for FVs' sustainable use and attain food security.Key words: Genetic erosion, barley, conservation, varieties. INTRODUCTIONBarley was domesticated in Southwest Asia from tworowed wild barley, Hordeum vulgare ssp. spontaneoum (Harlan, 1976). However, recent researches attributed two origins for barley, that is, mountainous areas of Ethiopia and Southeast Asia. The earliest cultivation of barley was believed to have begun some 8,000 to 10,000 years ago in the area of the Middle East known as the Fertile Crescent (Giles and Von Bothmer, 1985; VonBothmer and Jacobsen, 1985).Barley is the predominant cereal crop in the high altitudes (>1800 m.a.s.l.) and it can be cropped twice a year. The main season, locally known as meher, relies on June-September rainfall, while the March-April rainfall provides moisture for a second season, known as belg (Lakew et al., 1997;Bekele et al., 2005;Shewayrga and Sopade, 2011).The greatest diversity of barley in terms of morphological types, genetic races, disease-resistant lines, and endemic morphotypes exists in Ethiopia (Orlov, 1929;Huffnagel, 1961). In Ethiopia it was cultivated by the ancient Agews as early as 3000 before Christ (Gamst, 1969) and since then the crop is grown as farmers' variety (FV's) by subsistence farmers and provide a more dependable and sustainable production for the farming community than the other cereals in the highlands of Ethiopia. In parts of southern and central Ethiopia, the E-mail: girma.megersa@yahoo.ca. Tel: +251911056829.history of barley cultivation is reported to have coincided with the history of the plough cu...

Assessment on the Current State of On-Farm Diversity and Genetic Erosion in Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) Landraces from Bale Highlands, Southeast Ethiopia

“…As a result, estimate of their combined genetic integrity is lower (44.0%) with eventual extent of their combined genetic erosion being higher (56.0%). A similar increasing trend in the extents of genetic erosion on barley landraces have been reported from different parts of the country [ 15 , 20 ]. With regard to the study districts, six, Gololcha (87.5%), Gasera (77.8%), GuraDamole (75%), Sinana (73.3%), Dinsho (68.4%), and Ginnir (66.7%), had moderately higher genetic integrity and consequently lower genetic erosion.…”

“…Ethiopia is among the countries facing the problem and has very scarce, if not none, detailed baseline information on the extents of on-farm genetic diversity and genetic erosion in indigenous food crops and their wild relatives [ 15 ]. Barley landraces are among the indigenous food crops with very scarce such information and lacks standard methodology.…”

“…Ethiopia is one of those countries regardless of being the world's rich biodiversity center and harboring a variety of distinct food crops. In recent days, the country is under severing threat of loss in genetic diversity and most of the indigenous food crops are at risk of total extinction [ 11 , 14 , 15 ]. Ethiopian barley ( Hordeum vulgare L.) landraces are among those crops regardless of their valuable and distinct agronomic traits [ 16 ].…”

On farm diversity of barley landraces in North Western Ethiopia

“…This means 75% of the landraces present in the last ten years are still under production and the remaining ones were lost. Similar results in many other crops have been reported; i.e., farmer varieties are rarely seen in the fields (Girma, 2014).…”

Generation, Gender and Knowledge Gap in Agrobiodiversity Among Smallholders in Nepal

“…They also suggest that such knowledge be integrated into contemporary research to enable farmers respond to global agriculture and climate change challenges. Despite this fact, such knowledge is not taken into account in most of the adaptation work (Cote & Nightingale, 2012;Ribot, 2010), and as a result, local knowledge is eroding together with the loss of local varieties, limiting the future options for developing new varieties (Friis-Hansen, 1999;Megersa, 2014) and weakening local adaptive capacity (Chhetri & Chaudhary, 2011).…”