Screening of Some Coffee Arabica Genotypes Against Coffee Wilt Diseases (Gibberella Xylarioides Heim And Saccus) At Jimma, Southwest Ethiopia

It is essential to reduce coffee yield losses due to coffee wilt disease (CWD) in the country through the development and use of genetically resistant coffee varieties to increase and consistently supply Arabica coffee to the fast growing coffee industry. The soil-borne nature of the pathogen and perennial character of coffee have made management of coffee wilt disease difficult through the conventional control approach of ‘uproot and burn infected trees at the spot’. Therefore, longer-term prospects of successful management of coffee wilt disease depend principally upon employing resistant coffee cultivars. With this objective laboratory and field evaluations were conducted to screen some coffee genotypes against coffee wilt disease. Disease severity or mean percent seedling death ranged from 0.00 to 89.96 %. The result showed in lowest seedling death rate, long incubation period and high field survival rate of most accessions indicating resistant reaction to coffee wilt disease. Thus present experiment implied that the potential of obtaining coffee wilt disease resistant coffee variety from these accessions provided that they have other desirable traits like resistance to major coffee diseases, high yield and improved quality.