Crop Research Directorate

General Background

The agriculture sector in Tigray plays a central role and holds great potential to save lives and contribute to livelihoods, support rural households, and provide decent employment. From this, the crop sub-sector plays an important role in Tigray economic development as a major source of income, provides food and nutritional security, employment opportunity, and saves on foreign exchange expenditure through import substitution. Currently, the annual crop production stands at more than 2 million tons of food crops and 36,441.61 tons of horticultural crops from nearly 954522.53 ha (74% of the cultivated land), all supporting 1,818,960 households. The crops research directorate, in this regard, is mandated to conduct, promote, streamline, co-ordinate and regulate research in all agro-ecologies of Tigray, considering all crops of economic importance with the objective to generate, multiply and disseminate crop information, technologies, knowledge, and practices to accelerate productivity, value addition, and enhancement of competitiveness for meeting the local demand and beyond so as to improve the livelihoods. 

Research Centers Engaging in Crops Research

Currently, six agricultural research centers are engaging in research on various crops to varied extent and representing different agro-ecologies of Tigray.

Human Resources

Research Thematic Areas

• Improving food and nutrition security
  • • Crop productivity and quality

• Climate change and variability
  • • Climate smart/resilient agriculture
    • Improve early warning system for crop productivity
    • Utilization of weather information in crop packages
• Agro-processing and value addition
  • • Commodity specialization
    • Enhancing agro-industry competitiveness
• Export commodities and commercialization
  • • Introducing and improving productivity of exportable agricultural commodities
    • Promoting commercialization of smallholder agriculture
    • Enhancing quality outputs
• Job creation and cross cutting issues
  • • Introducing income generating commodities
    • Empowering women and youth in agriculture
    • Participation in crop technology development and transfer
• Promoting urban agriculture

Research Setup

In order to contribute significantly to the economic development, crop directorate is structured into six research programs as outlined below.

1. Cereal crops research
2. Pulse crops research
3. Oil and fibre crops research
4. Horticultural crops research
5. Plant biotechnology research
6. Plant protection research

Strategic Intervention

• Genetic improvement
• Crop agronomy and physiology
• Crop protection
• Plant tissue culture 
• Source seed multiplication
• Technology promotion
• Urban agriculture
• Advisory  and capacity building

Beneficiary and Stakeholders

• Farmers
• Investors
• Bureau of Agriculture
• Bureau of finance and economic development
• Agro-industries
• Seed enterprises
• Cooperatives and unions
• Small and micro enterprises
• Higher learning institutions
• Ethiopian institute of agricultural research (EIAR)
• Institute of biodiversity conservation (IBC)
• Agricultural transformation institute (ATI)
• Regional research institutes  (RARIs)
• Forestry and  environmental protection research institute
• CGIAR centers (CIMMYT, ICARDA, ICRAF, ICRISAT, CIP, ILRI,)
• Non-governmental organizations (FSRP, ICRC, FAO, WFP, World Vision Australia, GIZ, Irish Aid, BENEFIT, IFAD)

Research Output

• Twenty-four varieties of different crops have been released
• Significant number of crop technologies were recommended through adaptation from national and international sources 
• Crop agronomic technologies and practices that increase crop productivity were developed and recommended 
• Integrated pest management technologies and practices were developed and recommended 
• Rejuvenation of germplasm and maintenance of breeder seed of improved varieties that are under production 
• Early generation seeds (breeder and pre-basic) multiplication 
• Development of secondary metabolites and multiplication of disease-free potato, sweet potato, papaya, and mushroom
• Promotion of improved technologies  and practices

• Coordination of crops research regionally (Tigray)

Get In Touch

Teklay Abebe (Ph.D.)

Senior Researcher

Email: teklayabebe6@gmail.com

Cell phone: 0911905589

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