scholarly journals Participatory potato seed production: a breakthrough for food security and income generation in the central highlands of Ethiopia

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abebe Chindi ◽  
Egata Shunka ◽  
Atsede Solomon ◽  
W. Giorgis Gebremedhin ◽  
Ebrahim Seid ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Agricultural Research ◽  
Crop Protection ◽  
Potato Production ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Potato Seed ◽  
Protection Measures ◽  
Potato Varieties ◽  
Production Technologies ◽  
Sub Saharan

AbstractQuality seed is one of the major bottlenecks hampering the production and productivity of potato not only in Ethiopia but also in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since the 1970’s, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research has generated a number of improved potato production technologies such as improved varieties with accompanying agronomic practices, crop protection measures, postharvest handling techniques and utilization options. The developed technologies were promoted from 2013-2015 via technology promotion and popularization to the Wolmera, Adea-Bera and Ejere districts with the objective of creating awareness and up scaling of improved potato production and utilization technologies. The Potato Improvement Research Program and the Research and Extension Division of Holetta Research Center in collaboration with extension staff of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) undertake this activity. The farmers were selected and organized in Farmer Field Schools and all stakeholders were engaged before distributing potato seeds and planting on selected farmers’ fields for demonstrating of potato production technologies. A total of 899 farmers and 40 agricultural experts were trained and 27.7, 9 and 5.5 tons of quality seeds of Gudanie, Jalenie and Belete potato varieties, respectively, were delivered as a revolving seed with their recommended agronomic packages; this amount of seed covered 21.1 ha. A total of 16 farmer groups from Wolmera, 7 from Adea-Berga, and 11 from Ejere participated. They produced over 434 tons of relatively clean seed and constructed 8 diffused light stores. In addition to the demonstration of improved potato varieties, information dissemination was also an important component of the program to raise awareness for a large numbers of potato growers through farmers’ field days, pamphlets, and mass media. Each year about three field days were organized and more than 1500 pamphlets were distributed to farmers invited from neighboring districts and ‘Kebeles’ to enhance speed. Through this intervention farmers are now harvesting a yield of about 26-34 t/ha up from 8t/ha when they were using inferior quality potato seed; this has made the farmers in the intervention area more food secure especially during the usually food scarce months of August to October when cereal crops are generally yet to mature. The farmers are also getting additional income from the sale of excess potato and are able to better meet other necessary costs like school fees, for their children.

TRACING THE SEED: SEED DIFFUSION OF IMPROVED POTATO VARIETIES THROUGH FARMERS’ NETWORKS IN CHENCHA, ETHIOPIA

2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
YENENESH TADESSE ◽  
CONNY J.M. ALMEKINDERS ◽  
ROGIER P.O. SCHULTE ◽  
PAUL C. STRUIK
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Potato Production ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Potato Varieties ◽  
Seed Tubers ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
New Varieties ◽  
Sub Saharan

SUMMARYThere are many prerequisites for potato production to meet its full potential as a food security crop for subsistence farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. One of these is the introduction of improved varieties. Traditionally, the introduction of new varieties is by government agencies or Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). To understand the diffusion of seed tubers (seeds) of new potato varieties in farmer networks, we analysed social factors influencing the sharing of seed of improved potato varieties amongst farmers in Chencha, Ethiopia. We interviewed 166 farmers and analysed 146 seed transactions. We used seed flow mapping to visualize seed sharing amongst farmers. We found that the social networks of farmers are differentiated by wealth, gender and religion, and that this differentiation affects the dispersion of new varieties through the farming communities: Wealthier farmers shared seed tubers most frequently and poor farmers did not share seed at all. Seed sharing was influenced by, but not restricted to, gender and religion categories. Most sharing was with relatives (as gifts) and neighbours (in exchange for labour). There weas no equal access to seed for all households because of (i) the targeting of the better off farmers by the NGO (ii) differences in frequency of sharing and (iii) terms and motivation of the transactions. Our results show that wealthy farmers most effectively multiply and share the seed of new varieties with medium wealthy and poor farmers. This study shows that for the introduction of new technologies into a community, its dynamics of social differentiation need to be understood.

scholarly journals Glass Beads, Markers of Ancient Trade in Sub-Saharan Africa: Methodology, State of the Art and Perspectives

Heritage ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 2343-2369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farahnaz Koleini ◽  
Philippe Colomban ◽  
Innocent Pikirayi ◽  
Linda C. Prinsloo
Keyword(s):  
Glass Production ◽  
Glass Beads ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Secondary Phases ◽  
Ancient Trade ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Production Technologies ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Sub Saharan

Glass beads have been produced and traded for millennia all over the world for use as everyday items of adornment, ceremonial costumes or objects of barter. The preservation of glass beads is good and large hoards have been found in archaeological sites across the world. The variety of shape, size and colour as well as the composition and production technologies of glass beads led to the motivation to use them as markers of exchange pathways covering the Indian Ocean, Africa, Asia, Middle East, the Mediterranean world, Europe and America and also as chronological milestones. This review addresses the history of glass production, the methodology of identification (morphology, colour, elemental composition, glass nanostructure, colouring and opacifying agents and secondary phases) by means of laboratory based instruments (LA-ICP-MS, SEM-EDS, XRF, NAA, Raman microspectroscopy) as well as the mobile instruments (pXRF, Raman) used to study glass beads excavated from sub-Saharan African sites. Attention is paid to the problems neglected such as the heterogeneity of glass (recycled and locally reprocessed glass). The review addresses the potential information that could be extracted using advanced portable methods of analysis.

scholarly journals Tapping the Economic Potential of Chickpea in Sub-Saharan Africa

Agronomy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1707
Author(s):  
Asnake Fikre ◽  
Haile Desmae ◽  
Seid Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Policy ◽  
Cropping Systems ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Cropping System ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Economic Potential ◽  
Seed Systems ◽  
Production Technologies ◽  
Environment And Development ◽  
Sub Saharan

Chickpea is a nutrition-rich, cropping-system friendly, climate-resilient, and low-cost production crop. It has large economic potential in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region, where it currently accounts for only approximately half a million hectares of the approximately 12 million hectares of total chickpea production land worldwide. This review highlights the opportunities for promoting chickpea production and marketing to tap the vast economic potential in SSA. The region can potentially produce chickpea on approximately 10 million hectares, possibly doubling the global production, and the region could become one of the highest consumption geographies of this healthy crop. Chickpea could easily be integrated into existing cropping systems including rice-fallows and cereal monocropping systems. Successful cases studies of the crop in the region are highlighted. The region could tap into the potential at scale through intervention in the agricultural policy environment and development and promotion of improved chickpea production technologies supported by well-organized extension services and sustainable seed systems. These interventions could be complemented with value addition and product quality improvementsÍ for SSA chickpea to benefit from high-value markets.

scholarly journals PPMaP: Reproducible and Extensible Open-Source Software for Plant Phenological Phase Duration Prediction and Mapping in Sub-Saharan Africa

Agriculture ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 515
Author(s):  
Henri E. Z. Tonnang ◽  
Ritter A. Guimapi ◽  
Anani Y. Bruce ◽  
Dan Makumbi ◽  
Bester T. Mudereri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Crop Protection ◽  
Plant Phenology ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Phase Duration ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Landscape Level

Understanding the detailed timing of crop phenology and their variability enhances grain yield and quality by providing precise scheduling of irrigation, fertilization, and crop protection mechanisms. Advances in information and communication technology (ICT) provide a unique opportunity to develop agriculture-related tools that enhance wall-to-wall upscaling of data outputs from point-location data to wide-area spatial scales. Because of the heterogeneity of the worldwide agro-ecological zones where crops are cultivated, it is unproductive to perform plant phenology research without providing means to upscale results to landscape-level while safeguarding field-scale relevance. This paper presents an advanced, reproducible, and open-source software for plant phenology prediction and mapping (PPMaP) that inputs data obtained from multi-location field experiments to derive models for any crop variety. This information can then be applied consecutively at a localized grid within a spatial framework to produce plant phenology predictions at the landscape level. This software runs on the ‘Windows’ platform and supports the development of process-oriented and temperature-driven plant phenology models by intuitively and interactively leading the user through a step-by-step progression to the production of spatial maps for any region of interest in sub-Saharan Africa. Maize (Zea mays L.) was used to demonstrate the robustness, versatility, and high computing efficiency of the resulting modeling outputs of the PPMaP. The framework was implemented in R, providing a flexible and easy-to-use GUI interface. Since this allows for appropriate scaling to the larger spatial domain, the software can effectively be used to determine the spatially explicit length of growing period (LGP) of any variety.

Building Innovation Systems for Small-Scale Agricultural Activities in Sub-Saharan Africa

2016 ◽  
pp. 276-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olawale Oladipo Adejuwon
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Research ◽  
Innovation System ◽  
Innovation Systems ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Agricultural Activities ◽  
Research Systems ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Successful Innovation

The failure of agricultural research systems to provide appropriate technologies to enhance competitiveness in small-scale agricultural activities in sub-Saharan Africa has been well documented. Recognising the peculiarities of such activities, this chapter proposes that a system of innovation where; the actors interact with each other; a combination of science- and experience-based mode of learning and innovation is used and; users provide producers of innovations with feedback will produce appropriate innovations for the sector. It is further hypothesized that the success of this system will be dependent on; the number, scope and strength of interactions among actors; brokerage activities; and an initial successful innovation system for downstream activities. The chapter also undertakes a qualitative assessment of the some-what successful Cassava and the not-so-successful palm oil sectors in Nigeria to highlight the importance of the framework and the differences between successful and ineffective innovation systems.

ANALYSIS OF PROFITABILITY OF ORANGE FLESH SWEET POTATO (Ipomea batata) IN OSUN STATE, NIGERIA

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-150
Author(s):  
A. M. OMOARE
Keyword(s):  
Linear Regression ◽  
Sweet Potato ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Potato Production ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Service Support ◽  
Major Producer ◽  
Use Efficiency ◽  
Sub Saharan

Nigeria is a major producer of sweet potato in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study looked at resource use efficiency and profitability of Orange Flesh Sweet Potato (OFSP) in Osun State, Nigeria. Two out of the three zones in Osun State were randomly selected from which six blocks were selected; and thirty cells were randomly selected from the six blocks. Two Hundred and Fifty (250) respondents were randomly selected across the thirty cells for the study. Data were analyzed using linear regression and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). Results of the study showed that respondents are agile and active in orange flesh sweet potato production, with mean age of 38.8 years and had wealth of experience (12.6 years). Most (82.4%) of the respondents cultivated orange flesh sweet potato on ridges, 78.8% used hired labour and 92.4% used personal savings for orange flesh sweet potato farming. The average yield of orange flesh sweet potato was 6.20 tonnes/ha, the Total Revenue (TR) was ₦127,999.93/ha while the profit was ₦46,841.93/ha. Major limitations to orange flesh sweet potato production are inadequate finance (83.2%), poor extension service support (80.45), and inadequate market information (74%). Results of linear regression showed that land (t = 3.146, p = 0.001), labour (t = -3.105, p = 0.003), agrochemicals (t = 8.499, p = 0.000), and seeds (t = 3.928, p = 0.004) were determinants of orange flesh sweet potato production (p < 0.05). In addition, correlation revealed negative relationship between constraints faced by the respondents and profit realized from orange flesh sweet potato production (r = -0.72, p = 0.01). The study concluded that orange flesh sweet potato production was profitable. It was recommended that soft credits should be extended to sweet potato farmers by the banks in the study area.    

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