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Indigenous crops also known as orphan crops are key contributors to food security, which is becoming increasingly vulnerable with the current trend of population growth and climate change. They have the major advantage that they fit well into the general socio-economic and ecological context of developing world agriculture. However, most indigenous crops did not benefit from the Green Revolution, which dramatically increased the yield of major crops such as wheat and rice. Here, we describe the Tef Improvement Project, which employs both conventional- and molecular-breeding techniques to improve tef—an orphan crop important to the food security in the Horn of Africa, a region of the world with recurring devastating famines. We have established an efficient pipeline to bring improved tef lines from the laboratory to the farmers of Ethiopia. Of critical importance to the long-term success of this project is the cooperation among participants in Ethiopia and Switzerland, including donors, policy makers, research institutions, and farmers. Together, European and African scientists have developed a pipeline using breeding and genomic tools to improve the orphan crop tef and bring new cultivars to the farmers in Ethiopia. We highlight a new variety, Tesfa, developed in this pipeline and possessing a novel and desirable combination of traits. Tesfa’s recent approval for release illustrates the success of the project and marks a milestone as it is the first variety (of many in the pipeline) to be released., Euphytica, 214 (2), ISSN:0014-2336, ISSN:1573-5060

Breeding for moisture stress tolerance by conventional methods is not satisfactory in view of current demand to increase crop productivity. Inducing somaclonal variation is a potential technique to obtain stress tolerant variants. The present study was conducted to evaluate the performance of tef somaclones (R1 generation) and their respective parental genotypes for drought tolerance. The materials used in this experiment were obtained from the R0 generation of previous in vitro culture experiment. Twelve seed derived somaclones; Melko 0, Melko 0.5, Melko 1, Melko 1.5, Gemechis 0, Gemechis 0.5, Gemechis 1, Gemechis 1.5, Pop12S20, Pop12S20.5, Pop12S21 and Pop12S21.5 and their respective parental genotypes (Melko, Gemechis and Pop12S2) were used under two set of experiments (i.e., under moisture stress and non-stress conditions) in pots under green house. The experiments were laid out in completely randomized design with three replications. Analysis of variance revealed that somaclones (R1 generation) and their parental genotypes showed highly significant (P ≤ 0.01) difference in all the measured traits under both moisture regimes. Comparisons were made between the somaclones and their parents under moisture stress and non-stress conditions for the measured traits. Under moisture stress condition superiority of the somaclones was observed except for number of spikelet/panicle and total number of tiller/plant. On the other hand, under non-stress condition better performance was observed from parental genotypes for number of spikelet/ panicle, panicle weight, panicle seed weight, plant weight, plant seed weight and grain yield. The results showed that all the somaclones and their parental genotypes were negatively affected by moisture stress for all studied parameters. However, somaclones were less affected by moisture stress as compared to the parental genotypes. Hence, in vitro culture induced somaclonal variation can effectively be used for selection and improvement of drought tolerant tef genotypes.