EVALUATION OF SOYA-BEAN (GLYCINE MAX. L.) MERRILL) CULTIVARS FOR ADAPTABILITY AND YIELD PERFORMANCE IN THE LOWLANDS DISTRICTS OF LESOTHO.
Soya-bean is grown in small area by small holder farmers in the lowland districts of Lesotho without evaluating for suitability of each cultivar to a particular area, thus leading to low productivity. The study was therefore conducted to (i) evaluate six soya-bean cultivars for adaptation and high yield performance in five districts in the lowlands of Lesotho, namely; Botha-Bothe, Leribe, Mafeteng, Mohales’hoek and Quthing. Randomized Complete Block Design was applied to lay-out the plots with six treatments and replications. The dimensions for main plot and sub-plots were 33m length x 12m width and 6m length x 3m width, respectively. Yield data were collected after harvesting, after which it was captured and analyzed using Genstat Version 20. The results revealed that Mohales’hoek district outperformed all the other four districts in yield performance followed by Mafeteng, while Botha-Bothe was the lowest. Soya-bean cultivars DM6.8iRR, DM5351RSF and DM5953RSF out-performed the other five cultivars evaluated with. The interactions that produced highest yield were in Mohales’hoek planted with DM5351RSF (618.77g/plot), followed by DM68R09 with 615.83g/plot and DM5353 RSF (564.17g/plot), all in Mohales’hoek.
Keywords– : Soya-bean, yield performance, Lesotho, multi-location trial, Analysis of variance
