Participatory evaluation of sorghum technologies in the marginal dryland zones of Wag-lasta, Ethiopia.

Despite dryland areas are diverse in agro-ecology; technological recommendations are summative and based on researchers' on-station genetic traits, which deprived the farmers' preference, the economic and technical efficiencies. Participatory sorghum technologies evaluation was thus initiated to compare dryland sorghum technologies (Misikir and Girana-1) against the local practice in a wider scale, comprising 450 farmers from marginal districts of Wag-lasta. The agronomic, economic and preference data were collected and analysed in descriptive statistic, ANOVA, partial budgeting and weighted ranking matrix. The combined result indicated that Misikir, Girana-1 and the local sorghum provided mean grain yields of 2.9, 1.6 and 1.5 ton ha⁻¹, respectively. Accordingly, Misikir technology has 81.3% and 93.3% yield advantage over Girana-1 and the local, respectively. The marginal rate of return (MRR) of Misikir is 477.6% but insignificant for Girana-1 by the cost higher than the local practice. The weighted ranking matrix also shows that Misikir was preferred by its earliness, seed setting performance, grain and biomass yields. Dissemination of Misikir technology is thus safely recommended. The finding further revealed that technological recommendations using on-station plot trials is dwarfing the adoption rates since farmers would hesitate to uptake as if they did not evaluate the technologies on their local context. The paper concludes that scale wide farmers' participation is vital in future experiments for sustainable and demand-driven technology development and diffusion on top of providing feedback to the concerned agricultural scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]