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Cotton is one of the main cash crops in Ethiopia and is widely grown in the lowlands on large-scale and small-scale farms under both irrigation schemes and rain-fed agriculture.There are about more than 3 million hectares of potential land suitable for cotton production in the country.However, out of the country‘s total potential areas for cotton production, only about less than three percent is being utilized yet.So, the current domestic cotton production is much lower than the potential.But, cotton consumption in Ethiopia is outstripped domestic cotton production due to the demands of the rapidly expanding textile industry in the country. Thus, Ethiopia has been importing raw cotton from abroad. Cotton production and productivity is highly constrained by a lot of biotic, abiotic, social and economic factors. For the last five decades the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research/EIAR/ and Werer Agricultural Research Center/WARC/ has made the utmost effort and several improved cotton technologies were released; such as improved varieties along with proper crop management and crop protection practices. Since,transgenic cotton has been proved in controlling the major insect pests in global cotton production, Ethiopia recently started Bt cotton adaptation trialafter getting approval for CFTs by the regulatory authority in the country to overcome the constraints of bollworms in the cotton production andtwo genetically modified cotton hybrids were recommended for commercial production. Despite the huge research efforts made, the production and productivity of the crop was not attained its maximum potential as a result of low utilization of the research recommended technologies by cotton producer farmers and low utilization of resource potential lands. There are several factors contributed for the low acceptance, underutilization and/or adaptation of the improved cotton technologies. Therefore, there is a huge gap ahead to fill in technology development, research capacity building and creating effective research, extension and stakeholders linkage. In this paper, potential areas, production trends, gaps, research status and future directions for cotton improvements were assessed in order to plan well-organized research strategies for the future. |
