Kulle: A New Brown Seeded Tef Variety Released to Address the Emerging Demands of Growers and Consumers

Abstract

Kulle is a common name given after official release to a brown seeded tef variety with a pedigree DZ-Cr-387 X DZ-01-99 (RIL-106). Kulle means “beautiful” in Afan Oromo language to express its deep brown colour preferred by several consumers. It was developed and released by Debre Zeit Agricultural Research Center by crossing a very white seeded variety DZ-Cr-387 (Quncho) as a female parent with a brown seeded variety DZ-01-99 (Asgori) as a male (pollen) parent. A yield trial consisting of 18 genotypes and a standard check (Felagot) was conducted at Debre Zeit, Chefe Donsa, Ginchi, Holetta and Debre Markos in 2019 and 2020 cropping season. ANOVA and AMMI analyses showed highly significant (p< 0.001) effect of the environments (E), genotypes (G) and genotype × environment interaction (GEI) on grain yield. Based on AMMI analysis, 53.7%, 10.8% and 35.6% of the total sum of squares were justified by environment, genotype and GEI, respectively. The GEI was further decomposed into principal component axes where the PCA₁ and PCA₂ explained 42.64% and 23.4% of the GEI sum of squares, respectively. DZ-Cr-387 X DZ-01-99 (RIL-106) gave a combined mean grain yield of 2339.5 kg/ha which significantly (P<0.01) out yielded Felagot by 13.8%. Besides, it also showed 23.7% biomass yield and 20.1% panicle length advantage over Felagot. Hence, DZ-Cr-387 X DZ-01-99 (RIL-106) was verified in 2021 and got release approval in 2022 for commercial production in the high potential tef growing environments of Ethiopia by a new name called DZ-Cr-542 (RIL 106) or Kulle