No abstract

Soil moisture conservation, proper irrigation scheduling and nutrient management are crucial for sustainable cucumber production. A field experiment was set up over two years (2018 and 2019) to investigate the effects of irrigation frequency, black polyethylene mulching, and nitrogen fertilization on cucumber yield, water use efficiency (WUE) and nutrient use efficiency (NUE) at Ikole-Ekiti, Nigeria. The experiment was a 3 x 2 x 2 factorial in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with a split-plot arrangement and the main plot as drip irrigation frequency: twice per week (I4), three times per week (I5), and four times per week (I6), while the sub-plots were nitrogen fertilization; (no fertilizer, N0 and 180 kg/ha urea, N180) and mulching (no mulch, NM and mulch, M). The highest yield (8.39 and 8.51 t/ha) with the best WUE was obtained from treatment I4MF (F, fertilization), while the lowest (5.81 and 5.79 t/ha) was obtained from I6MF for the respective years. The combination of variables significantly (P<0.05) influenced cucumber yield, WUE, and NUE, and significant correlations were obtained (r=0.87** and 0.85**) between WUE and fruit yield for the study years. The treatment I4MF therefore, could successfully be adopted to reduce water and fertilizer application for improved cucumber yield in the field.

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Several factors influencing rural-poverty in sub-Saharan-Africa, for all the factors, agricultural-land access/management and “culture of poverty” are quite dominant in literature. This study examines socio-cultural/economic factors influencing poverty and establishes linkages of heterogeneity of land-use systems. Farm-level cost–route surveys of cross-sectional national-data of 800 respondents were used for analysis. Data were analyzed by descriptive-statistics, trans-logarithmic model, and poverty-measures. Descriptive statistics depict land-ownership structure, farmer’s socio-cultural practices, and exploits of government intervention programs influenced agricultural-poverty. Trans-logarithmic coefficients results of short-run sustainability-index (SRSI), land-policy intervention variables and household-sizes are dominance factors. Also, SRSI indicated 0.69, suggesting that 69% of the farmers made unsustainable use of agricultural-land. Moreover, 92% of extremely poor respondents with large household-sizes (61.2%) seek their agricultural-land ownership by rentage, while those with land-titled documents constitute 78.6% of the non-poor. Public-policy interventions must take into account formalization of land-property rights in order to facilitate its transferability and boosting investment.

Weeding is currently still carried out manually in Nigeria and some of the African countries. This is despite the  efforts that have been made to develop different types of weeding machines in Nigeria with different drive mechanisms, features and designs.  Up to this point, no model or design have been commercialized but they remain in the prototype stage partly due  to sophistication, poor quality and low efficiency. In this study, a prototype of motorised weeding machine, actuated by a reciprocating mechanism was designed and fabricated for use on most subsistent crops plots.   The reciprocation prevented the need to move the blades back and front as this action is automatically achieved in one process.The design features included 20o rake angle of the cutting blade, a working depth of 2.54cm and 28cm  width of cut. Dimensions and the thickness of blades were designed according to the principles of  general soil mechanics. Other machine elements were designed following PSG TECH procedures. After fabrication and assembly, the machine was tested on a 10m 10m plot planted with maize and test result indicated a functional efficiency of 98%, quality performance efficiency of 82.7% and field capacity of 0.036m2/s as against 0.01m2/s with manual weeding. The material for the construction was sourced from locally available materials.The weeding machine has an effective cutting width of 27.5 cm and a production cost of NGN 175, 000.00.