Maize Yield Gaps and their Mitigation in Ethiopia: Exploration and Redesign

Maize is an important cereal crop in Ethiopia. It is grown in all regions of the country and used as staple food. Studies have revealed that water limited yield gaps of the country are often greater than 10 tonnes (http://www.yieldgap.org/ethiopia). To mitigate the current high maize yield gap in maize growing CRV and Western highlands of Ethiopia, improved crop management options need to be explored. As yield of the crop depends on supplied inputs, in depth understanding of input-output relations is important for defining the technical means for achieving the target yield. Farm households are different in their resource endowments and farm management practices. As a result, there is no single maize yield gap mitigating solution but  rather, different options is needed for different regions, farms and soil classes. The majority of smallholder farmers depends on maize for their livelihoods. Hence, improving the productivity of maize would address the food security of many people of the country. Therefore, we propose exploration of alternative crop management technology options; quantifying the impact of nutrient management, weed management and plant density on maize yield gap mitigation; redesigning these options under realistic field conditions while incorporating farmers’ views and objectives, and scaling up of these findings to regions based on biophysical and socio-economical similarities.