Abstract
Globally, interests to increase carbon stocks have gained momentum in both woody and non-woody ecosystems. Despite efforts made to generate appropriate methods to estimate these stocks, most equations developed do not cater for intraspecific variabilities across e.g. species, regions or growth stages; especially in the case of bananas. Therefore, there is need to develop more robust equations to improve on the precision of biomass-carbon prediction especially at local scales to facilitate estimation of specific carbon stocks often lost in global assessments. This study aimed at developing cultivar-specific biomass estimation relationships and determining carbon content of EAHB cultivars at two growth stages. Plant data were collected purposively using destructive sampling techniques on farmers’ plots for 4 cultivars (Kibuzi, Nakitembe, Enyeru and Nakinyika) in two agro-ecological zones: the L. Victoria crescent and the South-western farmlands in the districts of Lwengo and Mbarara respectively. Results show that biomass differed across cultivars (P<0.001); hence four equations (Enyeru, Nakinyika, Kibuzi_Nakitembe and Generic) were developed following an exponential function, y=Aexp(ax), using diameter at breast height (DBH) as the predictor variable with an R2 range of 82-94%. EAHB mean carbon content varied significantly with growth stage (P<0.05) (47.6% for maiden plants before flowering and 48.8% for mature plants with a developed bunch). This study concludes that it is important to develop cultivar-specific equations for biomass-carbon estimation of EAHB cultivars to help assess their contribution to the carbon cycle especially in future studies. Key words: East African Highland Bananas (EAHB) cultivars, allometric equations, total plant biomass, carbon content, growth stage.
Highlights
Interests to enhance carbon stocks in the biosphere have gained momentum in both woody and1866 Afr
The allometric equations developed in this study were cultivar specific (Figures 1 and 2; and Table 2) though results showed that total dry biomass was significantly different across both cultivars and growth stages
These findings are in line with Nyombi et al (2009) suggestion on the need to develop growth stage specific allometrics given that dry biomass of East African Highland Bananas (EAHB) differs across ontogeny
Summary
Interests to enhance carbon stocks in the biosphere have gained momentum in both woody and1866 Afr. Interests to enhance carbon stocks in the biosphere have gained momentum in both woody and. Res. non-woody ecosystems as a means to address global climate change (Nair et al, 2009; Anthony et al, 2011; Lal, 2011). Considering the continuous shortage of land available for production of woody ecosystems (Henry et al, 2009), the need to find accommodative alternatives to deal with increasing atmospheric GHGs without compromising food production and economic development has to be addressed, e.g. through use of perennial crops like banana. The approach has since received attention despite that pre-requisites to actual implementation of such initiatives require accurate verifiable methods developed to estimate biomass, carbon content and carbon stocks especially in agricultural landscapes (Singha et al, 2011; Shem et al, 2013) which remains a big challenge
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