The study focused on the rural women's access to and control over productive resources and the implications of these variables on poverty alleviation among them. The population consisted of all the rural women in Osun State and stratified random sampling technique was used to select the 360 respondents used for the study. Some of the results revealed that a significant relationship existed between poverty alleviating strategies and respondents' access to productive resources such as family members labour (r = 0.15,p<0.05) and capital (r = 0.19,p<0.05). it was recommended among others that rural women should be given the opportunity to have access and some degree of control over productive resources in order to alleviate poverty in the rural areas.

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The study analysed the factors affecting watermelon production by watermelon farmers in Ekiti State, Nigeria. A snowball sampling technique was adopted in the selection of forty two watermelon farmers. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Pearson Momment Correlation (PPMC) and factor analysis. Findings showed that 64.3percent of watermelon farmers were found in Ise Ekiti. The mean score of the respondent's age was 39 years, 76.2percent of them were married with 10 years of farming experien commonly grown watermelon variety was sugarbaby, 50percent of them used both personal and hired labour and 45.2 percent produced greater than 20tons/ha of watermelon. Majority of the farmers with mean score (3.79, 3.71, 3.57, 3.60 and 3.31) agreed that rainfall, transportation, storage of watermelon, market price of watermelon and Prevalence of pest and watermelon disease were the factors that affects production of watermelon in the study area. The study revealed that lack of capital , poor m perishable nature of watermelon and lack of technology for large scale production with mean score 2.38, 2.19, 2.17 and 2.07 respectively were the serious constraints faced by farmers during the cause of production. PPMC analysis (r=0.047, 0.000, 0 showed that there was significant and positive relationship between years of experience, labour source, farm size, planting of other crops and yield of watermelon. The result of the factor analysis showed that the factors affecting watermel factor, personal/economic factor, climatic/soil factor and infrastructural factor. The foregoing suggests that research institutes should make available improved seeds that are not susceptible to pest and diseases to the grass yield and returns.

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