Introducing and Evaluation of Conservation Agriculture in Dry Land of Borana, Oromia, Southern Ethiopia

The adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices could help smallholder farmers in Ethiopia enhance food security and appropriately manage climate change impacts. Conservation agricultural practice is intended to conserve, improve and make more efficient use of natural resources. However, despite these potential benefits, CSA is only practiced in some areas of Ethiopia and has not been sufficiently adopted by smallholder farmers. Therefore, this experiment was intended to improve the production and productivity of maize through different moisture conservation practices and to determine and recommend the best moisture conservation practices for agro-pastoralists in Yabello District, Borana Zone. The field experiment was conducted at Qobo, Qadale and Colksa Kebeles of Yabello districts for two consecutive years, from 2019 to 2020, the main cropping seasons. The experiments had four treatments (Runoff diversion, Furrow, Runoff diversion plus Furrow and Control) laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) of three replications. The analysis of variance showed that there was a significant difference among treatments in days to maturity, cob diameter, cob length, hundred seed weight and grain yield in all cropping seasons and locations. The highest grain yield was obtained from furrow with diversion structure treatment (5.83, 5.59, 4.2 t/ha), followed by diversion structure (5.51, 4.84, 3.9 t/ha) at Qadale, Colkasa and Qobo Kebeles, respectively. The lowest grain yield was recorded for the control (farmers practice) treatment (3.56, 3.05 and 3.36 ton/ha) at Qadale, Colkasa and Qobo Kebeles, respectively. In all sites, moisture conservation treatments (furrow plus diversion, diversion and furrow) have yield advantages of 2.27 t/ha (40.68%), 2.54 t/ha (45.44%), 0.84 t/ha (20%), 1.95 t/ha (35.39%), 1.79 t/ha (36.98%), 0.54 t/ha (13.84%) and 1.88 t/ha (34.55%), 2.02 t/ha (39.84%) and 0.36 t/ha (9.43%) more than farmer’s practices, respectively. Therefore, moisture conservation practices are recommended for optimum production of maize in moisture stress areas of Yabello District, Borana Zone.