Reaction of Promising Illu-Ababor Coffee Selections Against Major Coffee Diseases

Coffee is prone to a number of diseases that attacks berries, leafs, root and stems reduce the yield and marketability. Among diseases Coffee Berry diseases (CBD), Coffee leaf rust (CLR), Coffee wilt diseases (CWD) are the major diseases in Ethiopia. The study was contained 13 coffee selections collected from different coffee producing areas of illu-ababor zones with four resistant checks (754, 7410, 744 & 7440). These selections were planted at Metu Agricultural Research Sub center (MARC) Gore and Chora trial sites in RCBD during 2010 cropping year. Significant difference among the genotypes for coffee berry diseases was observed specially at CBD prone site Chora. Severity values of selections ranged from 0.00 – 51.27% and among selections 229/71(3.00), p-23(8.55 showed below 5% severity at Chora and promoted to attached berry test. As the result in the (Table 1) indicates, the coffee accession 229/71(0.47)% showed highly resistant reaction to coffee berry disease and selected for further breeding purposes. While, 678 (51.27), revealed 50% susceptible reaction for both visually and by attached berry test to CBD. The selections were showed highly resistant reactions (744,754, P-23, P-30) 0.13, 0.16, 0.66 and 0.88 respectively and the remaining were showed moderately resistance reaction to coffee leaf rust at three locations. The seedling test result indicates that two coffee selections (P-30) and (P-23) 17.7% and 21% moderately resistant reaction and the rest coffee selections showed susceptible reaction to coffee wilt diseases.