Participatory variety selection of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) in Taricha Zuriya district of Dawuro Zone, southern Ethiopia

Groundnut is a leguminous seed that contains a lot of oil and protein with high energy content. However, improved varieties were hardly evaluated based on farmers' preference criteria and their participation. Therefore, a participatory variety selection was carried out in Taricha Zuriya district in Dawuro Zone on the mother-baby approach on farmers' fields in the 2019 and 2020 main cropping seasons, aiming at evaluating the performance of groundnut varieties through farmers' participation and assessing their preference criteria. Six released groundnut varieties were tested using a randomized complete block design with four replicates at farmers' fields. The mother trial was done at one model farmer field (all four replications on one field), whereas the baby trials were done at four farmers' fields by considering farmers as replication per village. Combined analysis of variance for two years showed a highly significant (P < 0.001) to significant (P < 0.01) differences among groundnut varieties for grain yield, days to 50 % flowering, days to maturity, seeds per pod, pods per plant, 100 seed weight, except for both stand count at emergence and harvest. Among the tested varieties, BaHajidu (1805.84 kg ha(−1)) was identified as the best yielding groundnut variety, followed by Bulki-01 (1805.50 kg ha(−1)) and Werer-963 (1780.0 kg ha(−1)), respectively, while Werer-962 variety has a lower yield (1536.30 kg ha(−1)). Bulki-01 (96), BaHajidu (90), and Werer- 963 (76) obtained higher score values as preferred by farmers, whereas lower score values were observed for Manipinter variety (45). The aforementioned varieties Bulki-01, BaHajidu and Werer-963 were also preferred using selection criteria set by farmers as 1(st), 2(nd,) and 3(rd) in rank order respectively. Hence, based on farmers’ preference values and biological data, these three groundnut varieties were recommended for pre-extension demonstration and large-scale production in Dawuro Zone and areas with similar agro-ecologies.