Evaluation and Selection of Advanced Arabica Coffee Lines in Horo Guduru Wollega, Western Ethiopia

Background and Objective: The demand for Arabica coffee in developed and developing countries is exponentially increasing. Arabica coffee is the spinal cord of the Ethiopian economy, and it is the leading commodity in generating foreign exchange income. Hence, this study was conducted to evaluate Arabica coffee accessions of Horro Guduru Wollega and to select advanced lines for the next breeding program. Materials and Methods: The experiment was established at Melko in 2016/2017 using an augmented design with three blocks. Twenty-five accessions and four checks were included in the study. Three representative coffee trees were randomly selected per plot for growth data recording, and the yield data for each coffee genotype were recorded per plot. Four years of clean coffee yield and nine yield-related traits data were recorded and analyzed using R software. Results: The present findings manifested the existence of variability among testing materials in some harvesting seasons and yield-related traits. Even though the pooled mean of clean coffee yield showed a non-significant difference, about 12 accessions showed comparable yield performance with the check, which were released for the south-southwestern areas. The top twelve high yielders showed 1741.68 to 2414.33 kg/ha mean yield performance. Conclusion: In general, these advanced lines were selected and recommended to be further evaluated for yield, yield-related, and quality under well-managed and uniform plots at representative locations of their original areas.