On-Farm Potentials of Common Bean and its Contribution for Smallholder Farmers' Livelihood and Income

To enhance the gain yield and utilization of common bean, many challenges were observed. To tackle the challenges, this experiment evaluated five recently released common bean varieties through farmer’s participation. The varieties used for the evaluation were SAB-632, DAB-372, SER-119, SER-125 and KAT-B1. The study showed farmers can harvest a maximum of 2.6 t ha-1 using the improved common bean varieties. This can bridge about 60% of the yield gap observed compared with the farmers' practice. When cultivating the improved varieties farmers can also harvest more than 119,222 birr from one hectare. To compare the value of the benefits and the costs of producing common bean, a benefit-cost ratio (BRC) was calculated and found a 1.57 ratio. Thus, in Sire and similar agro-ecologies that cultivate common beans, it is advised to scale up the SER-119 variety to improve production and profitability.