WAVES 04 AUGUST

Africa RISING West Africa Virtual Exchange Seminar (WAVES)
4 August 2021
Virtual via Ms TEAMS

Present:

1. A. Berdjour – IITA
2. A. R Nurudeen – IITA
3. B. Boyubie – IITA
4. B. Kotu – IITA
5. E. Thuijsman – WUR
6. F. Kizito – IITA
7. G. Fischer – IITA
8. J. B. Tignegre – WorldVeg
9. K. Jimah – IITA
10. K. Sanogo – ICRISAT
11. K. Traore – IER
12. M. Bekunda – IITA
13. O. Cofie – IWMI, Ghana
14. S. Adebayo – IITA
15. W. Brooijmans – IITA
16. W. O. Duah – IITA
17. Z. Birhanu – ICRISAT

AGENDA

• Updates on the Handbook
• Presentation by Abdul-Rahman Nurudeen

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UPDATES ON THE HANDBOOK

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• G. Fischer – I would like to share an observation concerning the West Africa Handbook. I am included in several chapters as a co-author but I have not been contacted by anybody. There is little communication. The chapter where I am the lead author, I have communicated to the other authors what my draft plan is for the chapters. I received response from only Fred and Emelia; no one else responded. I feel there is very little communication about what our plans are and what kind of demands there are for contributions.
• F. Kizito – Gundula, your points are very well noted. The point you raised about being present on many chapters, and how no one is communicating to you about these chapters have been an ongoing issue. In your work plans, I noticed that there was no sign or indications as to who they will support. I will take it up and see how we will refine it. There is a lot of redundancy. Sometimes people want to put their names there to show that they care about the gender aspect without necessarily putting them at heart. It’s hard to see how best we can handle the aspect around communication. I have had a couple of knocks on the door from my side. We decided to bring Willemien on board. Her point as well is that she receives no communication. There are times I send out emails to you in relation to some of the handbook chapters and your contributions as lead authors to form teams, but there was no communication or response. We therefore decided to bring Willemien on board, to improve the communication, hoping that it would improve. Nonetheless, the point raised is well noted. I need to enable colleagues further. Prof is here; he’s gone through these routes previously. He’s been in these trenches and we will like to hear any advice with regards to how best to improve upon the Handbook. I am also part of the ESA Handbook, but I have not been managing it from the top. I have been a contributor.
• M. Bekunda – At one time I said I was available at a cost, but Fred said no. This is a challenge in itself. I think ESA had the advantage of starting the exercise long time ago. It has taken us three years, and we hope the book will come out this year. WA has a limited time, and I hope colleagues can note down the urgency of putting materials together. It requires a lot of work. It’s not only about putting down materials together. It goes through all of processes. From ESA’s experience, compiling a book is much different than writing the paper for publication. Therefore, the commitment is very important.
• G. Fischer – For me, this puts me into a very difficult situation. If I am on many chapters and there’s no communication, it means a lot of work might come at the very end, and which are not included earlier. Or, something may need to happen in many chapters at a certain point. This will make it very difficult for me to do work planning and to be part of the process. I therefore request that if people will not contact me, and include me from the very beginning, then, I think it will be better to have my name removed, so that I can also make my own work plan and to see what my workload will be. It becomes very difficult to foresee what is going to happen if my name is all over the place.
• F. Kizito – That’s a very fair remark. For now let’s focus on having your chapter fleshed out. We then encourage other colleagues who have put you on, to remove you. To the extent that they are not involving you, I’m in support that they remove you. If need be, then we need to bring in a couple of agenda linkages and nuances. At a point when you are really pre-occupied, and you are not planned for, then we need to outsource that. But let’s first concentrate on having your chapter fleshed out. I understand your point and I empathize with you. That’s well noted.
• K. Traore – If sending global messages is not working, why not focus on the individual researchers who are implicated and send them messages directly, stating their tasks, and copy Imgard and or the chief scientist? That can help push people to work. The colleagues are quite busy, but this calls for involvement so we have to face it. We did our best, but I don’t know if we are still concerned or not.
• Z. Birhanu – I agree with Kalifa’s suggestion to send individual messages to see how they respond. From that we can move on to the next level. If a co-author is not responding, then there’s no need to continue with the name. It is a collective effort to contribute, so if they are not willing to contribute, I think there’s no need to include them in the list of names in that book chapter.
• F. Kizito – I’m always counting on Birhanu and Bouba to help us with the colleagues in Mali. The point you raised is where we started from.
• W. Brooijmans – We have been sending individual messages to the lead authors, but some of the lead authors didn’t get back to us. So, it was not even about the co-authors, but the lead authors were supposed to contact the co-authors and report back to us.
• F. Kizito – We started from this approach, but later we decided to bring in more hands on board. This has not necessarily worked. Nonetheless, we will still revert to it. We will introduce the collation of the willing. If you are not contributing to a book chapter; if you are not responsive; if you are not part of the process or you have dropped from that chapter, we will come out with a Handbook that is the collation of the 'willing'. Prof Mateete has mentioned a very important point. For ESA, I remember we started in Zanzibar in September 2017. Next month will be will the fourth year. I’m a bit apprehensive because the program is ending next year. I think we need to get things done.

I will follow up and bring feedback. Birhanu, Bouba and Willemien should draw a road map to see how we can get out of the woods.

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PRESENTATION FROM A. R. NURUDEEN

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Cowpea living mulch effect on soil quality and grain yield in smallholder maize based cropping system of Northern Ghana The team members were: Abdul Rahman Nurudeen, Asamoah Larbi, Albert Berdjour, Fred Kizito and Irmgard Hoeschle-Zeledon. The outline of the presentation is:

OUTLINE OF PRESENTATION

Introduction

• Background
• Problem statement
• Justification and objective

Methodology

• Study area
• Experimental design and treatment
• Soil quality indexing

Results

• Cowpea living mulch effect on soil properties and soil quality
• Cowpea living mulch effect on maize grain
• Relationship between maize gain yield and soil quality
• Implications of the results on cowpea living mulch technology

Conclusions

INTRODUCTION Maize is a major staple crop for the people of Northern Ghana. The past one and half to two decades, maize replaced sorghum and millet which used to be their major staple some years back. This is due to the high maize yield and the taste of preference for maize by the people of Northern Ghana. Maize production for Northern Ghana is on small holder farm bases with about 77 – 94 % of the total land area under cultivation of maize being < 2 ha of farmland. It is also produced under rainfed condition with an average yield of < 2t/ha compared with a potential of 6 t/ha.

Erratic rainfall, low and diminishing soil fertility and weed infestation are among the key factors responsible for the yield gap between achievable yields of farmers’ field and the potential. To address these challenges, there is the need to develop an agronomic technology that improves soil moisture storage, improves fertility suppresses weed growth in maize production in order to close this yield gap. To think of such technology, one of it is Living Mulch. Living Mulch is a cover crop that is planted before, on the same day or after the main crop and maintained as a groundcover throughout the season or longer. Having the challenges of trying to improve soil moisture storage, soil fertility and weed suppression in maize, using a legume as the living mulch will address this objective better than using a grass crop as the Living Mulch. In this study, we used a legume as living mulch. Some of the benefits associated with using a legume as living mulch are in the presentation attached. The benefits of using legume as living mulch are:

• High groundcover which improves soil moisture storage, suppresses weed growth, improves the soil chemical, physical and biological properties.
• At the same time, it increases the yield of the main crop.

When we wanted to select a particular legume as the living mulch, we considered three conditions:

1. The socio-cultural characteristics of the farmers in the study area. Using a legume crop that does not produce food in addition to the qualities of living mulch, farmers will not buy that technology. They will not be willing to buy seeds of such crops, let alone using labour to plant them. Therefore, we had to think of a legume that could produce food in addition to the living mulch qualities.
2. To consider the growth cycle of the maize. We wanted living mulch that would fit into the growth cycle of the maize. This is because Maize production in the area mostly coincides with the end of the cropping season. When the season ends, animals are allowed to have free grazing on the field; and when the mulch is present, they might destroy it.
3. There is rampant bushfire in the area. If the mulch goes beyond the cropping season of the maize, bushfire may set in to destroy it. We therefore needed a legume crop that would fit into the growth cycle of maize. The maize maturity times used in the area varies from extra early (80 days) to medium (105 – 120 days). We needed to pick a legume that would fit within the growth cycle (80 – 120 days)
4. The growth cycle of the legume crop which we would want to use as living mulch. We wanted a legume crop that would either mature before the maize or coincides with the maturity of the maize in order to facilitate harvest.

Based on these three conditions, we settled on the cowpea as our legume crop to use on the living mulch. We therefore gave the technology a technical name ‘Cowpea Living Mulch.’