Several agricultural technologies and high yielding varieties have been disseminated from the research
centres operating under the umbrella of Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research such as: Holeta,
Debre Zeit and Melkassa Agricultural Research centres. While the core functions of Ethiopian Institute
of Agricultural Research (EIAR) are technology supply, popularization, national coordination and
capacity building and policy development, the research and extension divisions of EIAR are
responsible for transfer of technologies that are being developed in the respective research centres to
farmers and other functionalities through training. There is, therefore, an alarming need to improve
agricultural extension activities with the involved farmers through training. Therefore, the objective of
this study was to the effectiveness of farmers’ training in improving their knowledge and attitudes. One
woreda was purposively selected from areas where each one of the three research centres is offering
training to the farmers. Equal numbers of respondents of 40 trained and 40 untrained farmers from each
of the three research centres were selected for the study. Quantitative data were collected from the
respondents. Structured interview schedule was used for collecting the essential quantitative data from
the sampled trained and untrained respondents. The quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive
statistical tools and also chi-square t-test were employed. The major output of the study indicate that
training offered by the three agricultural research centre significantly improved knowledge of potato,
onion and durum wheat extension packages, attitude of farmers and level of practice of farmers
compared to those of untrained sample farmers.