Demand Driven Decisions on Demonstration and Evaluation of Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana) Technologies at Farmers Training Center (FTC) as Pre-conditions and Driving Force into Cluster Farming Approach and Commercialization Momentum

Technological or innovation pre-extension demonstration and evaluation is one of paramount importance to decide further momentum of scaling up and commercialization via large scale demonstration using clustering approach. Once we decided and had final preferred varieties or technologies it would be easy to systematically organize functions and stakeholders for further scaling up arrangements of selected technologies or innovations. Farmers’ training center (FTC) was identified as research experiment or demonstration site at which various technologies and innovations could be demonstrated and evaluated through participatory approach comprising farmers, development agents, agricultural experts, researchers and other key stakeholders were involved in all demonstration and evaluation processes. Participatory demonstration and evaluation of finger millet technologies was conducted at South Gondar Zone of North Western Ethiopia to demonstrate and evaluate improved finger millet technologies to farmers and extension workers and create demand on the technology for wider scaling up. One recently released variety was used under this demonstration to evaluate its performance and preferences with old varieties. It was particularly conducted in two districts which have differences to some extent in terms of agro-ecological and farming production systems. Totally four varieties including local check were demonstrated and evaluated at twelve FTC locations and/or sites and evaluated relying on varietal characteristics, farmers’ preferences and feedbacks. Farmers' variety or local check, which is a variety grown by farmers and has been cultivated for a long period, was used as a local check for comparison. To estimate the average and relative yield of each variety, a quadrant system of yield estimation was used. When it came to yield estimation, the tesema variety outperformed the others, even the local variety. Between the two districts, there were no statistically significant differences in mean yield between the shown types. However, the tesema variety's average yield differed significantly from the Ethiopian Central Statistical Agency (CSA) national average yield. All improved and demonstrated varieties had relative yield advantages over local variety. There were also relative yield advantages between improved varieties themselves. The main factors of variety selection for farmers and other important stakeholders were identified as grain colour, size, cooking quality, animal feed (palatability), biomass, marketability, and disease resistance. Relying on this work and preference of varieties, further large-scale demonstration using cluster farming approach need to be conducted to each of the site where demonstrations were undertaken. Variety releasing and development by respective breeders shall to take those variety selection criteria and farmers’ preferences in to account so as scale-up and out reach the technology towards other beneficiaries.