Abstract
Conservation agriculture (CA) is defined as sustainable agriculture production system comprising a set of farming practices adapted to the requirement of crops and local condition of each region. This experiment was conducted at three districts: East-Badawaho, Meskan and Hawassa-Zuriya. In each district five farmers hosted the experiment and each farmer was used as a replicate. The experiment was run for six years (2011-2016) at each farmer’s field. The experiment consisted of five treatments (Continuous sole maize, Maize bean rotation, Maize-bean inter-cropping, Bean rotation under CA and farmer practice. BH-543 maize variety and Hawassa-Dume common bean variety were used. Soil moisture content under CA practices was higher than the farmer practice during drought year. Maize yield and yield related traits and soil water data were collected from each site. At East-Badawacho grain yield was 4% higher in CA compared with farmer practice. Maize bean rotation and sole maize under CA out yielded the farmer practice by 13 and 4%, respectively but maize-bean inter-cropping had 5% lower grain yield. At Hawassa-Zuriya, CA maize bean rotation had higher yield than farmer practice in 2011 and 2013. At Meskan, CA had 8% higher than FP. Maize-bean inter-cropping, maize bean rotation and sole maize under CA had 10, 8 and 6% higher grain yield than farmer practice, respectively. Common bean grain yield from bean rotation under CA had 2799, 2908, and 3226 kg ha -1 at East-Badawacho, Hawassa-Zuriya and Meskan district respectively. Inter-cropping under CA had 817, 1065 and 927 kg ha -1 , respectively. Generally, CA cropping systems had random drought stress reduction potential as compared with common practice and even under normal condition cropping systems under CA had higher grain yield and biomass production potential. Keywords: cropping systems, farmer practice, sole maize, rotation, inter cropping; rift valley DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/10-12-01 Publication date: June 30th 2020
Highlights
In Africa, agriculture sector is mainly in the hands of small-scale farmers who use traditional methods and tools of production (Musa 2015)
Soil moisture The soil moisture content at planting was significant for treatments only in 2013 at 15-30cm depth (Table 2)
The highest soil moisture content was observed for maize bean rotation compared with other treatments
Summary
In Africa, agriculture sector is mainly in the hands of small-scale farmers who use traditional methods and tools of production (Musa 2015). Agricultural production in the semi-arid regions of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is challenged by many risk factors and high vulnerability of poorly resourced farmers (Solomon 2018). Key sources of risk in agriculture include climate, socio-economic factors, soil degradation, and poorly developed markets (Kassie et al 2013). Rainfall in Ethiopia is seasonal with high spatial and temporal variability. In the Central and Southern Rift Valley of Ethiopia rainfall pattern is bimodal and starts with the spring rains or Belg during the months of March-May and the summer rain or Kiremt extend from June-September (Solomon 2018)
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