Preliminary assessment of the responses of potato genotypes in the Eastern, Southern and centreal regions of Ethiopia.

In order to exploit the high yielding potential and disease resistance abilities in seedling populations of tuberosum x andigena, andigena x andigena, tuberosum x phureja, and tuberosum x tuberosum clones, a selection programa has been launched at the College of Agriculture in Alemaya. Over 3,000 seedling populations representing the four hybrid groups were obtained from the International Potato Center as true botanical seeds. After the fourth cycle of selection, adaptability trials of some representative clones from the hybrid populations were conducted in the 1976 crop seasons at Holeta, Nazreth, Alemaya, Endiber, Chencha, Areka and Kulumsa stations. There were a number of clones which appeared to have not only a high yielding capacities, but also satisfactory field resistances to late blight. In some of the trial sites, 19-50% of the clones tried gave tuber yields of more than 1 kg per plant. At the plant population level used, such yields are equivalent to more than 40 tons per ha. This can be considered significant when compared to local average yields of about 5 tons per ha. Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the potentially important crops in Ethiopia. At present, it is estimated that about 30,000 hectares of potato are grown annually in Ethiopia (4). This area has probably gone down the last few years because of the highly devastating epidemic of late blight, Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) de Bary in most of the major potato growing areas of Ethiopia (3). The land varieties of potatoes grown in Ethiopia are probably from the same parentage introduced in about 1858 by a German botanist called Shimper (6). Except for minor variations, they appear to be very similar in most of their general charactgeristics of susceptibility to late blight and poor yielding capacities. There have been a number of reports indicating an outstanding yield performances and satisfactory field resistances to late blight in hybrids of andignea-tuberosum, andigena-andigena, andigena-phureja, and tuberosum-tubersoum crosses (1,2,5,7). Inorder to exploit the hybrid advantage of these genotypes, a selection program has been initiated at the College of Agriculture in Alemaya in cooperation with the Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR) and the International Potato Center (CIP) with the major objectives of developing potato varieties which have high yielding capacities and adequate field resistances to late blight. This paper presents results of a preliminary assessment on the yield and other horticultural reactions of some of t he promising clones which were identified after four cycles of selections from the diverse potato populations.