Imagery from recently launched high spatial resolution WorldView-3 offers new opportunities for crop identification and landcover assessment. Multispectral WorldView-3 at 1.6m spatial resolution and LANDSAT8 images covering an extent of 100Km² in humid ecology of Nigeria were used for crop and landcover identification. Three supervised classification techniques (maximum likelihood(MLC), Neural Net clasifier(NNC) and support vector machine(SVM)) were used to classify WorldView-3 and LANDSAT8 into ...

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is the most important food grain legume crop in west Usambara highlands, but its yield remains below the potential largely due to nutrient deficiencies in the soils. To identify nutrients limiting bean production, on-farm diagnostic trials were carried out at nine farmer fields around Lushoto town in the short rainy season (vuli) from November 2013 until February 2014, though soil and leaf sample analyses. Bean leaf samples were analysed for macro and micronutrients, ...

Cowpea is important for the provision of both grain for food and fodder for livestock but there is often a trade-off between production of the two. To better understand influences on grain and fodder production, and how these may be utilized. Research was conducted at 5 locations in West Africa using 12 cowpea varieties, with and without insecticide spray. Spraying had a dramatic effect on grain production, but less so for fodder, however there was an effect of spraying on fodder quality in terms ...

Agriculture in the dry savannas is intensifying in response to increasing populations of humans and livestock. As a result, increased productivity demands are placed upon integrated crop-livestock systems and more emphasis is on the roles of legumes such as cowpea. Cowpea has the potential to function as a key integrating factor in intensifying systems through supplying protein in the human diet, and fodder for livestock, and bringing nitrogen into the farming system through nitrogen fixation. ...

Cassava (Manihot spp.) improvement strategies at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) are discussed here in relation to the main constraints, target ecologies and utilization of exotic germplasm. Germplasm generated from IITA populations and from other African or non-African programs was evaluated at locations representative of the target ecologies. Selected clones or families were included in one or more special populations set up for specific objectives, Elite broad-based ...

The influence of weeds community composition and dynamics on groundnuts intercropped with cassava was assessed in three different short fallow management systems, in the Forest Margins Benchmark Area of southern Cameroon (Central Africa). Fallow management intensities, indicated through differing fallow types, consisted of: recurrent Chromolaena odorata-dominated fallows (type I), C. odorata-dominated fallows that had been forest prior to the cropping phase (type II) and bush fallows not dominated ...