Participatory Evaluation of Drought Tolerant Maize Varieties using Mother-Baby Trial Model: A Case Study in the Forest-Savannah Transition Zone of Ghana

Maize is one of the worlds three primary cereal crops and also one of the most popular food crops on the domestic market in Ghana. Erratic rainfall pattern in the Forest-Savannah transition zone of Ghana for the past decade has caused shortfalls in rainfall amounts resulting in low maize production and productivity. The Maize Breeding Programme at the Crops Research Institute, Ghana, in collaboration with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Nigeria identified high yielding and drought tolerant open-pollinated and hybrid maize varieties for evaluation and eventual release to farmers. The mother-baby trial model was adopted for the evaluation of these varieties in the major season of 2009 in three farming communities in the target agro-ecology. The Farmers variety showed poor yield performance in both the mother and baby trials and in the ranking of varieties by farmers and researchers in both early and medium maturity groups. Almost all the improved varieties were appreciated by both researchers and farmers. The yields of the drought tolerant varieties in both normal and drought affected environments were higher than the farmers variety in both cases. The two most promising drought tolerant varieties, TZE-W Pop STR QPM C0 and IWD C2 SYN F2 out-yielded the Farmers variety by as much as 23 to 90% across locations. Therefore, these varieties were recommended by the Maize Breeding Programme at the Crops Research Institute to the National Variety Release Committee of Ghana for release to farmers in 2010.