Climate smart crops for food and nutritional security for semi-arid zones of Zimbabwe

Abstract

Southern Africa smallholder farmers continue to be the most affected by the challenges of climate change and variability. The variability of climate demands the use of a variety of agronomic strategies and crop choices. Traditional drought tolerant cereal crops such as sorghum and millets are often chosen when drought seasons are anticipated. However, there are certain crops, originating elsewhere, that could help the smallholder farmers increase diversity of crops that can be grown in changed climates. Trials were conducted to test a basket of known and introduced climate smart crops in the field. The cereal crops tested were maize, sorghum, pearl and finger millet, and legumes: tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolias), cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), Bambara nut (Vigna subterranea), groundnut (Arachis hypogaea) and pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan. A second experiment was conducted to determine the effects of inorganic fertilizer and rhizobium inoculation on the growth and grain yield of field grown tepary bean. Both experiments were laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Due to drought conditions during the growing season, cereal crops could not produce grain yield, as there was no grain filling. Despite this, cereal biomass was 5t ha -1 for maize, followed by sorghum (1.3t ha -1 ) and millet (1.2t ha -1 ). Legume crops produced grain with cowpea yielding 568.1kg ha -1 of grain, followed by tepary bean (245.9kg ha -1 ) and common bean (227kg ha -1 ). This is important for food, nutrition and health security of smallholder communities. Tepary bean inoculated with rhizobium and had fertilizer applied produced higher grain yield than those without fertilizer or rhizobium inoculant (P£0.05). In conclusion, resource poor farmers, affected by drought effects of climate change, can adopt both cereals and legumes climate smart crops, in order to create food and nutritional security. This is crucial for food and nutritional security of vulnerable households affected by climate change and variability.

Effect of planting date on tepary bean yield and yield components sown in Southern Botswana

“…Even though low rainfall were received in Sebele, tepary bean was able to produce some yields (136.45 kg/ha) ( Table 2). Our results confirm previous observations by Jiri et al (2017), that tepary bean can produce moderate yield under drought stress conditions, they recorded 245.9 kg/ha in the semi-arid environment of Zimbabwe. Under good soil moisture tepary bean has a potential to produce more than 2000 kg/ha (Thomas et al, 1983;Bhardwaj et al, 2002).…”

“…Author(s) agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License change challenge (Blair et al, 2012;Jiri et al, 2017). The cultivated tepary is an annual legume that originates from the Mesoamerican region in the Sonora desert; it is well adapted to hot arid climates (Thomas et al, 1983).…”

Pearl Millet as a Sustainable Alternative Cereal for Novel Value-added Products in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Review

“…It is an anti-diabetic cereal grain crop compared to rice, wheat and sorghum (Krishnan and Meera, 2018). This is due to its low glycemic index and slow digestive ability caused by its raised fibre content (Jiri et al, 2017).…”

“…It can be grown in regions characterized by persistent low rainfall due to its ability to tolerate and survive under variable drought weather conditions associated with increased temperatures and high soil salinity (Varshney et al, 2017). Pearl millet performs relatively well in low-fertile soils and with lower inputs of water and fertilizers in semi-arid regions (Jiri et al, 2017;Embashu and Nantanga, 2019). This cereal crop has the potential and desirable attributes to adapt to the harsh conditions when compared to other major crops (e.g., wheat, paddy and maize).…”

Multi-Environment Yield Components in Advanced Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) × Tepary Bean (P. acutifolius A. Gray) Interspecific Lines for Heat and Drought Tolerance

“…The Tepary bean (P. acutifolius A. Gray) is an annual autogamous bean from northwest Mexico [10,11], domesticated near the arid border with the USA, and with a strong preference for hot [12] and dry environments [13,14]. Thanks to this natural adaptation, the Tepary bean is the most heat tolerant among the five cultivated species of the genus Phaseolus.…”