Event Details:

"Evaluation of pigeonpea – yam cropping system for improved yam productivity and livelihood of small holder farmers"

Speaker: Eric Owusu Danquah (PhD Candidate), Dept. of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences

About the Talk:

Yam is a very important food security crop to at least 60 million rural poor producers, processors and consumers in West Africa. Cultivation of yams by rural households serves as food supply; income generation through marketing of ware yams; and production of planting material to meet their own needs and generate some income from the sale of surplus seed yams. Despite this importance, traditional yam cultivation is characterised with shifting from land to land every year in search of fertile lands and stakes resulting in soil and land degradation. Yam production has now stagnated threatening rural livelihoods and urban food security. This evaluation study adopts integrated soil nutrient management with a leguminous shrub – pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan) in a pigeonpea-yam cropping system for sustainable soil nutrient management for production. Also, the pigeonpea would serve as readily available stakes for yams to climb on. How much N is fixed by pigeonpea in a pigeonpea-yam cropping system? What influence does the pigeonpea biomass has on the short-term and long-term soil nutrients and soil carbon dynamics of the system? What are the economics likely to influence adoption of the technology? These are some of the questions the study seeks to explore.