Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter]

Tef Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter is the major food crop of Ethiopia in terms of production, consumption, and cash crop value and is also grown outside the Horn of Africa as a forage crop. In Ethiopia, tef production accounts for more than twenty-five percent of the gross grain production of all cereals cultivated in the country. Tef provides quality food and grows under marginal conditions, conferring it great economic and agricultural significance. Unfortunately, the productivity of tef is relatively low with national average yield of about 1.9 t/ha in 2020. This low productivity has roots in both technical and socio-economic constraints. In the last decade, however, tef has benefitted from scientific improvement, starting with genomic sequencing in 2014. This paper provides an overview of tef, its significance in Ethiopia, some of its major production constraints, and some of the major technical achievements made to date, including genome sequencing and the improvement techniques that followed. In addition, we discuss some of the agronomic traits that have been targeted for improvement such as waterlogging, drought, plant architecture, and nutrition.