Sorghum -cowpea intercropping is an important farming system for small scale farmers in Arid and Semi Arid Lands of sub-Sahara African. Information on the cowpea intercrop population and row orientation effects on growth and yields of sorghum-cowpea cropping systems is however scanty or unavailable for tropical Africa and East African region in particular.With this in mind, a factorial designed experiments was carried out at a farmer's field at Kampi ya Moto, Rongi, Kenya in two seasons i.e. December 2011 -April 2012 Season I (SI) and May-August 2012 Season II (SII). The treatments comprised of sorghum planted at a constant population of 55 555 plants/ha and intercropped with cowpea at varying populations of 55 555, 111 111, and 166 666 plants/hectare and rows oriented in East-West (E-W) and North-South (N-S) directions, respectively replicated three times. Results showed that increase of cowpea (intercrop) population from 55 555 to 166 666 plants/ha significantly (P ≤ 0.05) influenced crops growth, grain and yields attributes of both crops. However, there was no significant effect on harvest indices. Intercrop population (cowpea) of 111 111 plants/ha produced the highest cowpea grain yields of 214 and 632 kg/ha in season I and season II, respectively. The highest sorghum grain yields of 2 729 kg/ha and 3 011 kg/ha) were recorded in sole sorghum. The lowest sorghum and cowpea grain yields of 1 994.3 and 147.8 kg/ha were produced by the highest intercrop cropping system population of 166 666 cowpea plants/ha. The E-W row oriented cropping systems produced significantly higher cowpea grain yields ranging from 408 to 973 kg/ha compared to 333 to 838 kg/ha recorded under N-S row orientation. The N-S row orientation however, produced significantly higher sorghum grain yields of 1 874 and 2 123kg/ha from the sole sorghum cropping system in seasons I & II, respectively. It is recommended that farmers in semi-arid Rongai should intercrop sorghum at 55 555 plants/ha with cowpea at 55 555 during the short rainy season of SI (Oct -Dec) and at 111 111 plants/ha during the long rainy SII (May -Aug), season, with rows oriented in the E-W direction, in order to realize over 400 kg/ha cowpea and 2 000 kg/ha sorghum grains yields. The higher cowpea intercrop population of 111 111 plants/ha should be used in wetter seasons of semi arid climates.

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Occlusion of the stem vasculature by microorganisms that proliferate in the vase water, or the plant vessels, leads to water stress symptoms that reduce postharvest quality of cut flowers. This study aimed to determine the effects of pulsing and wet-cold storage on the microbial profiles in cut Gladiolus grandiflorus L. cv. Fado. Pulsing treatments of 600-ppm 8-hydroxyquinoline sulfate plus 5% sucrose solution versus distilled water were administered before wet cold storage periods of 0-5 days in cut Gladiolus, previously grown from corms under open field. A two-by-six factorial experiment embedded in a completely randomized design with four replicates was accomplished. Proc GLM in two-way Anova was adopted, and the means were separated using Tukey’s test at a 5% level of significance. The pulsing treatment of 600 ppm 8-HQS plus 5% sucrose, the wet cold storage duration and their interactive effects significantly (P˂0.0209; ˂0.0001 and ˂0.0001 respectively) affected the means of the colony-forming units in the vase water of cut Gladiolus at senescence. The prolonged vase life of cut gladioli spikes was associated with decreased microbial proliferation as influenced by pulsing and wet storage duration of up to 4 days. Data generated from this study will improve existing technologies related to the quality and market value of this Gladiolus cultivar.