Problems and Constraints of Small-Scale Irrigation (Fadama) in Nigeria

Towards sustainable vegetable production around agro-pastoral dams in Northern Benin: current situation, challenges and research avenues for sustainable production and integrated dam management

“…Indeed, challenges related to land access have been ranked as second to last (out of ten) around almost all the three APDs (see Table 2). This is inconsistent with results by Ogunjimi and Adekalu [37] and Cissé et al [39], which reported strong competition over lands around the major perennial streams in Nigeria and around APDs in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, respectively.…”

“…Ngome and Foeken [26] and Alao et al [30]), we found a strong and significant agreement on the ranking of the most important constraints among the respondents, indicating that gender did not considerably affect the perception of the constraints in our study. In addition, contrary to previous investigations in southern Benin and elsewhere in West Africa that reported access to land as a major constraint for vegetable production, especially in urban areas [9,11,12,37,38], we found that land access is not a major challenge for vegetable producers around APDs, even in the more urbanized study area. Indeed, challenges related to land access have been ranked as second to last (out of ten) around almost all the three APDs (see Table 2).…”

“…These constraints have been reported previously in vegetable production systems in Benin, Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa [8,9,26,30,37]. Although we did not assess how gender affects the perception of the constraints (e.g.…”

“…This constraint has also been reported by small-scale irrigation farmers along major rivers in Nigeria [37]. Unfortunately, since the majority of the producers are located upstream of the dams, the strategies they have developed to cope with this challenge, which include digging wells and boreholes in the dams' watercourse, potentially contribute to dam siltation.…”

Growth and Development of Watermelon in Response to Seasonal Variation of Rainfall

“…Irrigation was applied to the plant almost every day because of the small quantity of water supplied to the plant which was enough to satisfy the growth of watermelon. The root depth at each dekad was observed and used to determine the quantity of water to supply the crop at each phase of growth and thus, the total quantity of water supplied during the period was determined by multiplying the area of the plant irrigated (i.e 1m²) by the root depth at each dekad [21].…”