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.
SN
Center
Pillar Commodities
1
Humera
Sesame, fiber crops, lowland pulses (green gram, haricot bean, soy bean), and horticultural crops (banana, date palm, okra)
2
Shire-Maitsebri
Sorghum, maize, rice, finger millet, pepper, mango
3
Axum
Taf, chick pea, onion, mango, avocado, fenugreek
4
Abrgelle
Sorghum, groundnut, cow pea, citrus, pepper
5
Mekelle
Wheat, barley, faba bean, lentil, potato, sweet potato, tissue culture , cactus
6
Alamata
Wheat, barley, sorghum, faba bean, dekoko, papaya, pepper, onion, mango, tomato, coffee,
Human Resources
Manpower
Diploma
BSc.
MSc.
Ph.D.
Total
Researcher
-
29
59
94
Technical Assistant
13
Research Thematic Areas
Research Setup
In order to contribute significantly to the economic development, crop directorate is structured into six research programs as outlined below.
Strategic Intervention
Beneficiary and Stakeholders
Get In Touch
Teklay Abebe (Ph.D.)
Senior Researcher
Email: teklayabebe6@gmail.com
Cell phone: 0911905589
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