Performance assessment of water delivery to a smallholder irrigation scheme in Zimbabwe: Nyanyadzi case study

A research paper illustrating how potential benefits from smallholder irrigation schemes are rarely realised due to unsatisfactory performance of their water delivery systems in rural Zimbabwe.The potential benefits from smallholder irrigation schemes are rarely realised due to unsatisfactory performance of their water delivery systems. A study was conducted to quantify and evaluate water delivery performance indicators of adequacy (Ad), equity (Eq) and dependability (Dp) in three sub-blocks of Nyanyadzi smallholder irrigation scheme using water requirement analysis and a questionnaire survey. The water delivery performance evaluation was carried out between October 1996 and January 1997 for two maize crops under supplementary irrigation and for two consecutive irrigation cycles. Water supply adequacy (ratio of supply to demand) in the first cycle was good (Ad>1.21) and became marginally good (0.96 to 1.01) and poor (Ad0.2) at 73 percent of the 42 locations studied in the canal network. Results of a questionnaire survey revealed that the performance of the water delivery system was consistently low. Poor adequacy, equity and reliability of water supply were perceived respectively by 57 percent, 53 percent and 77 percent of the 30 irrigators interviewed. It was concluded that management input should be intensified in head block A to ensure better water deliveries to the scheme

Constraints And Opportunities For Cultivation Of Moringa oleifera In The Zimbabwean Smallholder Growers

The study sought to establish the constraints to Moringa agronomic practices and marketing in the smallholder farming sector of Zimbabwe. Purposive sampling selected 96 respondents across four study districts in Zimbabwe who were interviewed using an open-ended questionnaire. Eight focus group discussions disaggregated by gender were carried out to supplement primary data. Growers asserted Moringa oleifera production problems of livestock damage, theft, seed supply, inefficient cultivation practices resulting in inherent low productivity and poor marketing. The growers coped through intensive monoculture of M. oleifera, enhanced local seed supply from establishing their own seed orchards, product value addition and organized associations. Moringa can be used to promote climate change resilient agricultural systems and will be a solution to environmental problems. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 3 (1): 12-19, June, 2013 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/ijarit.v3i1.1604

The Effect of Catena Position on Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Dambo Located Termite (Odontotermes transvaalensis) Mounds from Central Zimbabwe

Methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2)O) are greenhouse gases (GHGs) which cause global warming. Natural sources of GHGs include wetlands and termites. Previous studies have quantified GHG emissions from upland termites and no study has reported GHG emissions from seasonal wetlands (dambo) located termite mounds. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of dambo catena position on termite mound distribution and GHG emissions. It was hypothesized that mound density and GHG emissions from Odontotermes transvaalensis mounds, vary with catena position. The evaluated catena positions were margin, mid-slope, lower slope and bottom. Mound density was significantly lower in the bottom when compared to the other catena positions. The mean GHG fluxes were 88 μg m2 hr-1, 0.78 mg m2 hr-1 and 1361 mg m2 hr-1 for N2) O, CH4 and CO2 respectively. Fluxes varied with catena position and were 0.48, 0.72, 1.35 and 0.79 mg m-2 hr-1 for CH4 , and 1173.7, 1440.7, 1798.7 and 922.8 mg m-2 hr-1 for CO2 in the margin, mid-slope, lower slope and the bottom catena position respectively. For N2) O, there were no significant differences between catena positions. It was concluded that dambo located Odontotermes transvaalensis termite mounds are an important source of GHGs, and emissions varied with catena position for CO2 and CH4

MasakhaPOS: Part-of-Speech Tagging for Typologically Diverse African languages

In this paper, we present AfricaPOS, the largest part-of-speech (POS) dataset for 20 typologically diverse African languages. We discuss the challenges in annotating POS for these languages using the universal dependencies (UD) guidelines. We conducted extensive POS baseline experiments using both conditional random field and several multilingual pre-trained language models. We applied various cross-lingual transfer models trained with data available in the UD. Evaluating on the AfricaPOS dataset, we show that choosing the best transfer language(s) in both single-source and multi-source setups greatly improves the POS tagging performance of the target languages, in particular when combined with parameter-fine-tuning methods. Crucially, transferring knowledge from a language that matches the language family and morphosyntactic properties seems to be more effective for POS tagging in unseen languages

A PRELIMINARY OBSERVATION ON SOIL PROPERTIES

ABSTRAC

Effect of bush encoachemtne on vertical soil organis carbon distrubution in a clay loam soil in Sahngani Ranches, Zimbabwe

No Abstract. SAJEST Vol. 2 (1) 2007: pp.8-1

Constraints And Opportunities For Cultivation Of Moringa oleifera In The Zimbabwean Smallholder Growers

The study sought to establish the constraints to Moringa agronomic practices and marketing in the smallholder farming sector of Zimbabwe. Purposive sampling selected 96 respondents across four study districts in Zimbabwe who were interviewed using an open-ended questionnaire. Eight focus group discussions disaggregated by gender were carried out to supplement primary data. Growers asserted Moringa oleifera production problems of livestock damage, theft, seed supply, inefficient cultivation practices resulting in inherent low productivity and poor marketing. The growers coped through intensive monoculture of M. oleifera, enhanced local seed supply from establishing their own seed orchards, product value addition and organized associations. Moringa can be used to promote climate change resilient agricultural systems and will be a solution to environmental problems. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 3 (1): 12-19, June, 2013 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/ijarit.v3i1.1604

CONSTRAINTS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR CULTIVATION OF Moringa oleifera IN THE ZIMBABWEAN SMALLHOLDER GROWERS

The study sought to establish the constraints to Moringa agronomic practices and marketing in the smallholder farming sector of Zimbabwe. Purposive sampling selected 96 respondents across four study districts in Zimbabwe who were interviewed using an open-ended questionnaire. Eight focus group discussions disaggregated by gender were carried out to supplement primary data. Growers asserted Moringa oleifera production problems of livestock damage, theft, seed supply, inefficient cultivation practices resulting in inherent low productivity and poor marketing. The growers coped through intensive monoculture of M. oleifera, enhanced local seed supply from establishing their own seed orchards, product value addition and organized associations. Moringa can be used to promote climate change resilient agricultural systems and will be a solution to environmental problems