International Journal of Applied Agricultural Sciences 2021; 7(3): 138-144 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/ijaas doi: 10.11648/j.ijaas.20210703.15 ISSN: 2469-7877 (Print); ISSN: 2469-7885 (Online) Participatory Variety Selection of Field Pea (Pisum sativum L.) and Apparatuses to Understand Farmer’s Selection Criteria in Eastern Arsi Zone of Ethiopia Deressa Tesfaye Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, Kulumsa Agricultural Research Center, Asella, Ethiopia Email address: To cite this article: Deressa Tesfaye. Participatory Variety Selection of Field Pea (Pisum sativum L.) and Apparatuses to Understand Farmer’s Selection Criteria in Eastern Arsi Zone of Ethiopia. International Journal of Applied Agricultural Sciences. Vol. 7, No. 3, 2021, pp. 138-144. doi: 10.11648/j.ijaas.20210703.15 Received: April 24, 2021; Accepted: June 19, 2021; Published: June 26, 2021 Abstract: Field pea is one of the protein rich grain food legumes that have a lion share in human diet in Arsi zone. It is a long time ago that field pea crop improvement started in which more than 16 new varieties released those are selected primarily for yield potential, but there is a traits left considered as a very import by majority of farmers. This study intended to recognize farmers important traits consider for decisive varieties to grow. The study was conducted at south eastern Arsi of Ethiopia, representing five major field pea producing location, in one growing season, using a participatory variety selection approach. A total of nine improved and one local check field pea varieties are used. Majority of farmers’ were found around fourteen traits that can influence the selected varieties across all location. There is also some traits those are more sensitive to gender difference. Among fourteen traits, nine were considered very important in one or all of the location in a growing season. Unfortunately there are preferred traits that are not given high priority by the current field pea breeding program in Ethiopian. This study indicated that there is no field pea variety possesses all desirable characteristics that meet the diverse farmers’ selection criteria that adapted to varied location and a growing season. It is better if farmers’ preference traits would be considered in breeding program for a country Ethiopia where the crop is consumed as a stable food. Keywords: Field Pea, Traits, Location and Variety 1. Introduction Pulse crops conquer an irreplaceable place in global agriculture through asset of highly nutritious and a huge share on contribution on atmospheric nitrogen fixation. Among the pulse crop field pea (Pisum sativum L.) is the one which is grown widely as a worldwide and currently lines among the four anterior pulse crops with cultivated areas of 7.8 million hectares. In Ethiopia the crop is widely grown in mid to highland and ranks fourth per the area coverage attainment of 8,141,031 ha with an annual production of 3, 481, and 44.631 [7]. It is the major food legumes with valued and inexpensive sources of protein taking prolonged vital amino acid (21-26%) that ensure high dietary tenets for resource poor households [10, 19]. The crop has a significant role in soil fertility restoration and serves as a break crop suitable for rotation to minimize the negative impacts of cereals based on mono cropping [21, 11, 9]. It also used as bases of income for the farmers and foreign currency for the country [8, 20]. Within this all facts the average yield of the crop is only 1.7t ha -1 in Ethiopia [23]. Still, it fluctuates and beneath the potential as compared to the World production of 2t per hectare [7]. Exclusive farmers’ participatory ways of variety selection process is the main problems behind in sufficiency of improved varieties with wider adoption rate, agronomic practice, diseases and insect pests. In other hand to address the needs of smallholder farmers, some improved field pea varieties has been released by the different regional and federal research centres as a country level since 1979 [16]. Those varieties were selected based on four major criteria – high yield potential, good ascochyta blight resistance, good