Project News

Mr. Abebaw Desse (Pawe Agricultural Research Center) is now receiving the JICA long-term training program in Japan, entitled Rice Research Production in Africa. He is now studying at Tokyo University of Agriculture, Tokyo Japan, as a MS student, and conducting his thesis research;

To identify suitable rice varieties with cold tolerance adopting to various agricultural ecologies in his home country, Ethiopia, he is conducting variety evaluation trials. The objective of this study is to identify rice genotypes as to their cold tolerance at germination and reproductive stages, also the correlation among the traits are estimated. The seeds of twenty-two rice genotypes, including eighteen upland NERICAs, one Indica and three Japonicas genotypes (as checks) are tested in three different temperature conditions, 14, 19 and 25°C, respectively. Coleoptile and radicle length, rate of emergence are observed as the major traits at germination stage, and spikelet sterility percentage, panicle exsertion, plant height and number of tiller per plant at reproductive stage are recorded to analyze their cold tolerance.