Evaluation of Potential Trap Crops on Orobanche Soil Seed Bank and Tomato Yield in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia

A field experiment was carried out with selected crop on a naturally Orobanche infested soil to test the potential of this crop in Orobanche seed bank exhaustion preciding tomato field at Melkassa Agricultural Research Center, Merti Upper Awash Agro-Industrial Enterprise and Ziway Horticulture Development Enterprise in 2002 and 2003. In the third season all plots were planted with tomato host plant to see the cumulative effect of trap crops to deplete soil seed bank of O. ramosa and O. cernua. Maize and snap bean showed better performance in stimulating germination of Orobanche seed bank and raised the germination by 74 and 71%, respectively. Maize and Snap bean were also complement each other under inter-cropping and soil seed bank of O. ramosa and O. cernua was depleted by 72.5% per season. Yield of tomato was significantly increased due to the reduction of Orobanche seed band in the 3rd season (2004).