No abstract

The effects of amending soil with organic (poultry manure) and inorganic fertilizer on yield and chlorophyll content of maize (Zea mays L.) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolour (L.) Moench) was carried out at the Teaching and Research (T&R) Farm of the Obafemi Awolowo University, (O.A.U.) Ile-Ife, Nigeria. The experiment was a randomised complete block design (RCBD), laid out in a split-plot arrangement in the second cropping season of year 2001 and 2002. There were four sources of fertilizer for soil amendment: inorganic fertilizer (IF), mixture of inorganic fertilizer and poultry manure (IFPM), poultry manure (PM) and control (C) (no fertilizer or manure treatment). Each fertilizer source supplied 54 kg N plus 25 kg P 2 O 5 and 25 kg K 2 O 5 /ha. There were significant variability and diversity observed on the two crops due to treatments. Grain yield was highest in sorghum (3.55 kg/ha) and maize (2.89 kg/ha) under IFPM followed by IF treatment for maize (2.33 kg/ha) and PM treatment for sorghum ((3.37 kg/ha). Sorghum and maize had the highest dry matter of 72.3 g/plant and 71.0 g/plant under IFPM at harvest. The effects of PM on the dry matter of sorghum (68.1 g/plant) and maize (61.7 g/plant) were not significantly different (p = 0.05) from that of IF (sorghum 66.1 g/plant, maize 58.7 g/plant). Sorghum also had the highest leaf area (LA) (2752.9 cm 2 /plant) and total chlorophyll content of 3.28 mg/g under PM while maize on the other hand had the highest LA (1969.5 cm 2 /plant) and total chlorophyll content of 2.63 mg/g under IFPM. In both maize and sorghum, the lowest chlorophyll content occurred in control plot. Drought tolerance measured as percentage chlorophyll stability index (CSI%) was highest under control plots in both crops.

The study evaluated high-value African cassava varieties for primary somatic embryogenesis using axillary meristems (AM) and immature leaf lobes (LL) on piclorambased medium. The study was conducted at the Central Biotech Lab, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria between 2006 and 2009. Completely randomized design with four replicates was used for the study. Using LL explants, there were significant (P=.05) differences in percent responding leaf lobes, percent explant with pre-embryogenic structure, PSEF and PSEE among cassava varieties. The PSEF of the only three varieties that produced mature somatic embryo were 93.6, 88.5 and 85.7% for TME 12, Kibaha and Albert, respectively. Similarly, significant (P=.05) differences existed among the varieties in percent enlarged axillary meristem, percent explant with pre-embryogenic structure, PSEF and PSEE when AM Research ArticleBritish Biotechnology Journal, 3(3): 263-273, 2013 264 was the explant. The PSEFs of the only three varieties that produced mature somatic embryo were 83.6, 77.5 and 72.7% for TME 12, Kibaha and Albert, respectively. The PSEF and PSEE of LL explant were greater than those of AM by an average of 86.1% and 82.7%, respectively. The study concluded that both AM and LL were good explants for production of primary somatic embryo in cassava. Keywords

No abstract

This work is a portion of the Ph.D Thesis of the first author JTO. The authors OOO, OAA and ILI read and approved the final manuscript.