The Ministry of Science and Technology has announced that outstanding innovators and researchers will be honoured on July 7th at a ceremony expected to be attended by the Prime Minister.

The research involved covers the release of three improved Teff varieties, disease-resistant wheat varieties and coffee seedlings with special taste and aroma. According to the Ministry’s Capacity Building Director, Girma Yosef, the new teff varieties provide more than 35 quintals of yield per hectare while traditional seeds can produce no more than nine quintals. The new wheat varieties also produce a ten percent increase in yield as well as being resistant to "wag", a disease that affects wheat as well as other grains. The team that worked on coffee has produced eleven varieties of coffee with different flavours and aromas by breeding from local forest coffee strains.

Seven of these new varieties have been distributed to model farmers, to investors and to state coffee farms and have been instrumental in boosting national production from 350,000 tonnes to 830,000 tonnes per annum. The new varieties are also drought and disease resistant.

Other innovations include a green coffee washing machine that can enhance the quality and speed of washing coffee beans; the design and production of machines to produce fuel from Jatropha plants, and a thread spinning machine that can increase the productivity of indigenous weaving. MFA