Abstract: Pest management in major cropping systems has long been dominated by chemical pesticides in Africa. Smallholder farmers have perceived pesticides as insurance to protect their crops. Consumers are less aware of pesticide-related food-safety issues, and markets providing economic incentives to producers who adopt alternatives to pesticides have been slow to emerge. Hence, overuse of pesticides has been constantly increasing. Although African countries have a number of pesticide-rela...
Abstract: One health’ (OH) is a cross-sectoral approach that addresses human, plant, animal, and environmental health problems. The initiative stems from recognition of the convoluted linkages among global health risks and the need for coherent multipronged countermeasures. For agriculture, environmental degradation and biodiversity depletion wrought by heavy reliance on inorganic inputs to meet the needs of the ever-growing human population, are a matter of societal concern. Agroecologica...
Abstract: Landscape fragmentation and habitat loss at multiple scales directly affect species abundance, diversity, and productivity. There is a paucity of information about the effect of the landscape structure and diversity on honey bee colony strength in Africa. Here, we present new insights into the relationship between landscape metrics such as patch size, shape, connectivity, composition, and configuration and honey bee (Apis mellifera) colony strength characteristics. Remote-sensing-b...
Abstract: Agriculture has done more damage to nature than any other human activity, and yet food production could need to be doubled by the middle of this century. As agricultural land is expanded and intensified, critical thresholds in the loss of natural habitats are crossed. This loss of non-crop habitats can have negative feedback on crop production,because it can cause a loss of “ecosystem services” that support and regulate crop production, such as the pollination of crops by bees ...
The right to adequate food is a universal human right that is realized when all people have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or the means for its procurement, without discrimination of any kind (FAO, United Nations). However, in a rapidly growing population, finite resources, environmental damage, climate change, and global inequality makes this an incredibly complex issue.
The soybean cyst nematode is a major contributor to decreased soybean yields every year, and this pest is hard to identify since there are no visible signs of sickness. The only way to detect the nematode is to extract cysts from soil, extract the eggs, and count them. To help alleviate this problem, a robotic instrument has been created to perform the tasks of the conventional manual extraction method. The instrument is managed by a touchscreen software, and its performance is evaluated usin...
Natural pollination and the physical impairments on plant leaves, as well as plant diseases are indicators of the presence of aboveground insects. However, there is less evidence to describe the presence of such insects in Rwanda. Thus, the objective of this study was to assess the abundance of the aboveground insect species in Musanze district, in the Northern part of Rwanda. Insect traps were laid in agricultural fields ten sectors of Musanze district; Busogo, Cyuve, Gacaca, Gataraga, K...
Pot experiments were carried out in the green house of the Soil Science Department, Faculty of Crop Production, Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam in 2017 summer season to determine the effects of different levels of bio fertilizer and single super phosphate (SSP) on maize. The experiments were based on three replications. The treatments used consist of three levels of bio fertilizer (0, 1.5 and 3 gram per pot), three levels of single super phosphate (SSP) (1, 1 and 1 gram per pot) a...
Field survey was conducted from August to November 2016 and repeated from January to April 2017 to study population, distribution and damage by tomato leaf miner (TLM) (Tuta absoluta Meyrick 1977) in 156 farms in agroecological zones of Tanzania. A pheromone trap/farm was deployed in tomato or other Solanaceae’s crops for examining moth of T. absoluta stuck in each trap and to determine damage by TLM. Results indicated that TLM is present in 13 regions with the highest population in Souther...