Effect of utilization of improved plantain production technologies among farmers in Abia State, Nigeria

The study focused on the factors that affect the utilization of improved plantain production technologies by farmers in Umuahia Agricultural Zone of Abia State, Nigeria. Data were collected with structured questionnaire and analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The results revealed that 55% of the respondents were males, with age of about 50 years, married (76.7%) and literate (95%) respectively. Most (95%) of the farmers were not members of any cooperative society and had their plantain plantation located in the field (56%). In terms of technology utilization, weeding (x̅ = 4.64) and pruning (x̅ =3.01) were highly utilized by the respondents respectively. Capital (x̅ = 4.49), poor access to technology (x̅ = 3.79), Labour intensive (x̅ =3.76), lack of information (x̅ = 3.71), transportation constraint (x̅ = 3.49) and complexity of technology (x̅ = 3.44), time constrain (x̅ = 3.42), Disease/pest attack (x̅ = 3.37), land availability (x̅ = 3 25) and lack of planting material (x̅ = 3.25) were found to be the major factors that affect utilization of the improved plantain production technologies in the study area. The inferential results shows that there was a significant effect of low market price, labour intensity and poor access to technologies on the level of utilization of the technologies. The study also shows that the utilization of improved plantain production technologies was very poor. The results therefore recommends that extension agents should step up efforts in agricultural information dissemination especially on improved plantain production technologies and labour efficient strategies to encourage its utilization by farmers.Keywords: Utilization, Improved Plantain, Production, Technologies and Farmer

Scale issues in soil moisture modelling: problems and prospects

Soil moisture storage is an important component of the hydrological cycle and plays a key role in land-surface-atmosphere interaction. The soil-moisture storage equation in this study considers precipitation as an input and soil moisture as a residual term for runoff and evapotranspiration. A number of models have been developed to estimate soil moisture storage and the components of the soil-moisture storage equation. A detailed discussion of the impli cation of the scale of application of these models reports that it is not possible to extrapolate processes and their estimates from the small to the large scale. It is also noted that physically based models for small-scale applications are sufficiently detailed to reproduce land-surface- atmosphere interactions. On the other hand, models for large-scale applications oversimplify the processes. Recently developed physically based models for large-scale applications can only be applied to limited uses because of data restrictions and the problems associated with land surface characterization. It is reported that remote sensing can play an important role in over coming the problems related to the unavailability of data and the land surface characterization of large-scale applications of these physically based models when estimating soil moisture storage.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Grenzen aan verandering; de verhouding tussen reorganisatie en structuurprincipes

Political Science; Public Administratio

Assessing health effects of air pollution in developing countries

Health effects of air pollution in Asia have been assessed as part of a programme on Regional Air Pollution in Developing Countries. The impacts of air pollution on health have been studied in North America and Europe for many decades, but research on effects on health in developing countries is less advanced. A key question is whether the dose-response models that are based on research conducted in developed countries can be applied to exposures to air pollution in developing countries. The study considered this issue and examined the factors that may lead to either increased sensitivity or increased human tolerance of air pollutants. It is suggested that although there are factors in developing countries that may increase or decrease human sensitivity to air pollution, overall, a similar range of sensitivity can be expected by individuals in these countries responding to the same effective dose as those in developed countries