Sensory Quality Attributes of Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] Injera as Influenced by Genotype and Environment

Tef is used to make injera (bubbly, pancake-like bread). It is believed that the white color tef grain produced in the central highlands of Ethiopia fetches the highest price as compared to the other areas due to its injera quality. Therefore, this experiment was conducted in the central and northwestern highlands of Ethiopia to evaluate Injera Sensory Quality Attributes (ISQA) on the three white-colored tef genotypes (Etsub, Magna, and Quncho) produced on five environments and to assess its relationship with edaphic factor, climatic factor, and grain and flour color of tef. The responses of the 21 knowledgeable consumer panelists' for top surface color, bottom surface color, malleability, eye appearance, and general rating; and 11 of them for taste subjected to Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The ANOVA result showed that except taste significantly (P < 0.05) different only on the environment, other ISQA were significantly (P < 0.05 to P < 0.001) different on the genotype, environment, and genotype by environment interaction effects. The variance component result revealed that the environment (52.4%, 38.7%, 62.5%, 87.6%, 69.0%, and 80.8%) and genotype (40.9%, 53.0%, 26.0%, 12.0%, 28.6%, and 18.6%) contribution to the variation of BSC, TSC, eye appearance, Malleability, taste, and general rating were high, while the genotype was low (6.6%, 8.3%, 11.6%, 0.3%, 2.4% and 0.6%). There were also significant positive correlations of soil properties (black color/vertisols pH, CEC, ca, Mg, and K), grain and flour color V value, and altitude; while soil total nitrogen and sulfur as well as precipitation showed an indirect significant relationship with IQSA. These results concluded that tef grown on vertisols with slightly acidic to neutral soil pH and relatively high in basic cations have a better quality of injera as compared to tef grown in nitisols with low soil pH and basic cations. Based on our results, we argued that the quality of tef injera “as low quality” grown in Vertisols of the northwestern highlands couldn’t be substantiated. A further study under controlled environment is recommended to evaluate the effects of different soil nutrients effect on ISQA under different soil types and agro-ecologies of Ethiopia.