Technology testing and validation efforts to revitalize lentil production visited by stakeholder

Lentil provides important economic advantages to the small-scale farm households in providing food, feed, cash income, and at national level, it also provides advantage to earn foreign currency, import substitution and job creation through value addition and processing. In spite of its importance, lentil productivity had remained very low mainly due to the use of low yielding local cultivars, lentil diseases, lack of improved seed producers and suppliers and poor practices of integrated disease and agronomic management practices. Furthermore, farmers did not adopt available lentil technologies owing to the lack of awareness and knowledge about available technologies. Currently, the crop is under great threat due to the occurrence of devastating lentil diseases and other pests.

On September 6, 2022, RAISE-FS in collaboration with Debrezeit Agricultural Research Center (DARC) organised a field day to showcase the validation and demonstration of lentil production technologies conducted in two kebeles in Ade’a woreda. The validation activity is conducted on farmers’ field in Ada’a Wereda at two kebeles (Denkaka and Akako).

The program begun with the blessing of local elders as per the traditional norm of the community followed by the opening remark of Dr. Dagne Modjo director of DZARC who briefly presented the available agricultural technologies from their center generated so far including the lentil technologies. In addition, he presented the collaboration work their center has with RAISE-FS project.

The field day focused on showcasing the technologies for wider awareness creation and to test and validating the innovations for sustainable supply of available technologies. The host farmers presented how they implemented the experiments based on the knowledge and technical support they got from researchers to the participating and neighboring farmers. Farmers who attended the event promised to share their learnings with their neighboring farmers by disseminating these technologies for increased lentil production and productivity.
In the field day event,
Dr. Tesfaye Letta, RAISE-FS project of Oromia region team leader briefly presented the overview of the lentil technology validation activity being jointly carried out by RAISE-FS project and DZARC.

It was explained that, though the experiment was set a bit late, the demonstrated technologies showed a promising result and there is also a clear treatment differences that allow farmers to make a choice among the technologies. The result of this study could be used as evidence to justify the importance of promoting the available lentil technologies in an integrated manner to scale up lentil production in the area and beyond.

About 60 participants which constituted from local government organization and partners and regional office and farmers attended the event.