EFFECTS OF FERTILIZER AND SOIL TYPES ON DIFFERENT CULTIVARS OF BRACHIARIA SPECIES BIOMASS YIELD AND QUALITY AND FARMERS’ PERCEPTION IN WEST GOJAM ZONE, ETHIOPIA Beyadglign Hunegnaw1,2, Yeshambel Mekuriaw1 and Bimrew Asmare1,2Andassa Livestock Research Center, Amhara Regional Agricultural Research Institute (ARARI), P O Box 527, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia , 1Department of Animal production and technology, Bahir Dar University, P O Box 5501, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia Brachiaria is a high nutritive value, productive and adaptive to low rainfall and acidic soil fodder grass, which is native to tropical Africa. Yet its productivity is depends on soil type, fertilizer application, type of cultivars, agronomic practices and environmental conditions. This field experiment was conducted at black and red soils with objectives to identify and select best adaptive, productive and nutritionally good Brachiaria grass cultivars based on soil type, fertilizer effect, farmers’ perception, and partial budget analysis. A factorial arrangement of three factors (two fertilizer levels, five cultivars and two soil types) with randomized complete block design containing three replications. The Brachiaria grass cultivars used in the study were: mutica, Mulato-I, Mulato-II, Marandu and La Liberated. The root splits of cultivars were planted on well-prepared land with spacing between blocks and plots was 1m while between plants and rows was 0.5m. All biological data were collected from 10 plants grown in the two middle rows and farmers’ perception was collected before harvesting age. All Samples were harvested at 90 days of age, weighed, dried and then ground to pass l mm sieve for forage nutritive value analysis. All biological data were subjected to a general linear model analysis of variance procedures of SAS version 9.0, while farmers’ perception was captured by pair wise preference ranking. The result showed that the interaction between fertilizer, soil type and cultivars had a significant (p<0.001) effect on all morphological characteristics, dry matter yield and nutritive value of Brachiaria grasses. The application of fertilizer had a significant effect on the morphological characteristics, dry matter yield and nutritive value of Brachiaria grass cultivars at both soil types as compared to without fertilizer. All morphological characteristics and most of the nutritive value parameters except crude protein were better at black soil than red soil. In most morphological characteristics and dry matter yield, mutica cultivar had better yield at both soil types followed by hybrid Mulato-II and hybrid ix Mulato-I. Brachiaria Marandu, hybrid Mulato-II, and hybrid Mulato-I had better crude protein content, but Marandu had low dry matter yield. In contrast, Brachiaria mutica has the lowest nutritive value with a high fiber content of all experimental cultivars. Based on the assessment of farmers' criteria, hybrid Mulato-II, hybrid Mulato-I and mutica cultivars