Participatory on Farm Evaluation of Improved Napier grass
- Slides: 8
Participatory on Farm Evaluation of Improved Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum) accessions in northern Tanzania. Gregory N Sikumba 1, Ben Lukuyu 1, Charles Gachuiri 2, Walter Mangesho 3 Festo Ngulu 4 and Mateete Bekunda 4 1 International Livestock Research Institute, (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya 2 University of Nairobi, Department of Animal Production, Nairobi, Kenya 3 Tanzania Livestock Research Institute, (TALIRI), Tanga, Tanzania 4 International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, (IITA), Arusha, Tanzania Corresponding author: gsikumba@cgiar. org
Introduction q In Tanzania, feed and livestock feed technology adoption is a major constraint to livestock productivity. q. Consequently, livestock feed availability is one of the major problems hindering livestock productivity. q. Exploiting potential of IMPROVED FORAGES as animal FEED (Napier grass accessions) q This will facilitating the intensification of forages into existing crop-livestock farming systems
Evaluate the performance of six Napier grass accessions and establish farmers’ criteria for Napier grass accession selection. Methods (i) Six Napier grass accessions (KK 2, KK 1, ILRI 16837, ILRI 16835, ILRI 16803 and ILRI 14984) (i) Napier grass Harvested at six and eight weeks from 3 field trials replicated 3 times in a randomized complete block design. (i) Two cuts per season of growth, nutrition and yield data was collected for two seasons. (ii) 30 Farmers identified and ranked their preferred Napier grass characteristics and accessions using To initiate the trials, farmer groups were used to select the farmers and as a learning pairwise ranking. Pair-wise ranking was used platform.
Results……… Overall Mean dry matter (DM) yields (t ha-1) of six Napier grass accessions Accession 2014 2015 Mean ILRI 16835 1. 94 a 7. 33 a 4. 63 KK 2 1. 50 ab 6. 13 a 3. 81 ILRI 16837 1. 33 ab 6. 00 a 3. 66 KK 1 1. 31 ab 5. 50 ab 3. 40 ILRI 16803 1. 24 ab 6. 00 a 3. 62 ILRI 14984 0. 75 b 4. 93 b 2. 84 q In both years, ILRI 16835 performed better than the rest of the accessions and was significantly different (P>0. 05) from ILRI 14984. q On average, the tallest accessions were in the order ILRI 16835>ILRI 16837>ILRI 14984>KK 1>ILRI 16803>KK 2. ab Treatment means followed by the same letter superscript in the same row do not differ significantly (P <0. 05). Accession Napier grass accessions growth characteristics ILRI 14984 ILRI 16803 ILRI 16835 ILRI 16837 KK 2 KK 1 Plant Height Mean and SD Number of Tillers per Plant Mean and SD 165. 50(17. 31) 155. 83(16. 89) 219. 33(75. 34) 195. 67(17. 95) 142. 00(6. 08) 157. 33(20. 86) 63. 33(18. 40) 58. 83(31. 45) 32. 17(15. 55) 33. 33(3. 06) 27. 00(5. 57) 61. 33(18. 64) Leaves Per tiller Mean and SD 11. 83(1. 17) 12. 17(4. 12) 14. 33(1. 75) 13. 33(0. 58) 13. 00(1) 14. 33(2. 07)
Results………cont. Nutritional Quality of the six established Napier grass accessions under study Ash OM N CP NDF ADL TIOMD KK 2 17. 66 (3. 59) 82. 13 (3. 56) 1. 24 (0. 26) 7. 73 (1. 64) 67. 49 (2. 69) 49. 31 (3. 98) 6. 81 (0. 58) 39. 69 (7. 73) KK 1 16. 33 (3. 65) 83. 34 (3. 12) 1. 45 (0. 37) 9. 66 (3. 79) 68. 81 (4. 07) 51. 36 (4. 32) 7. 77 (2. 68) 42. 77 (5. 99) ILRI 16837 18. 26 (3. 38) 81. 74 (3. 38) 1. 45 (0. 27) 9. 06 (1. 71) 65. 65 (3. 67) 48. 56 (4. 84) 7. 06 (0. 61) 37. 99 (6. 23) ILRI 16835 17. 38 (3. 38) 82. 62 (3. 00) 1. 22 (0. 38) ILRI 16803 24. 24 (11. 39) 75. 76 (11. 39) 1. 70 (0. 41) 7. 66 (2. 36) 10. 61 (2. 54) 68. 48 60. 85 (4. 41) (8. 08) 51. 12 47. 82 (3. 85) (4. 42) 7. 12 (0. 79) 5. 83 (0. 77) 39. 03 44. 78 (7. 69) (6. 54) ILRI 14984 19. 66 (4. 71) 80. 34 (4. 71) 1. 47 (0. 42) 9. 15 (2. 59) 62. 52 (6. 95) 48. 39 (4. 42) 6. 83 (0. 65) 43. 02 (11. 41) Mean 18. 00 (4. 46) 81. 88 (4. 32) 1. 39 (0. 35) 8. 85 (2. 69) 66. 65 (4. 92) 49. 79 (4. 32) 7. 11 (1. 54) 40. 74 (7. 41) q ILRI 16803 showed high average levels of Crude protein (CP) (10. 61%) and Nitrogen (N) (1. 7%) q ILRI 16835 had the lowest levels of CP (7. 66%) and N (1. 22%).
Results………cont. Ranking of the six selected accessions by farmers and researchers Accession KK 2 KK 1 ILRI 16837 ILRI 16835 ILRI 16803 ILRI 14984 Farmers’ rank 1 4 3 2 6 5 Researchers’ rank 2 4 3 1 6 5 Scale: 1: The Best, 6: The Worst The most important criteria for adoption of Napier grass accessions q Researchers ranked ILRI 16835 as the best performing accession. q Farmer ranked KK 2 as the best performing accession q ILRI 16803 remained the worst ranked accession
Conclusion § The research findings show that KK 2, ILRI 16835, KK 1 and ILRI 16837 consistently produced higher yields. § These accessions were also ranked as the ‘best bet’ accessions for adoption from farmers overall preference scores. § Farmers appreciated the importance of participatory variety selection of the different accessions rather than empirical selection on yield and nutritional quality only. § This was seen were KK 2 was preferred even if it was not the most productive variety empirically in terms of yield and Nutritional quality. § In a nutshell, farmers forage selection criteria should be taken into consideration in forage breeding programs to enhance adoption when scaling.
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