Nitrogen and weed management in transplanted tomato in the Nigerian forest-savanna transition zone

Weed infestation and inherent low soil fertility are among primary reasons for low yields of tomato in Nigeria. Field trials were carried out during the wet season of 2015 and 2016 to evaluate yield response of tomato to nitrogen (N) application and weed control methods in the forest-savanna transition zone of Abeokuta, Nigeria. Positive relationship exists between growth of weed species and increase in N application. Across the years of study, increase in N up to 90 kg/ha increased weed density by 11–25%, however, the increased N gave the transplanted tomato competitive advantage and thus enhanced weed smothering. Pre-transplant application of butachlor (50% w/v) or probaben® (metolachlor 20% w/v+prometryn 20% w/v) each at 2.0 kg a.i/ha followed by supplementary hoe weeding at 6 weeks after transplanting (WAT) significantly reduced weed density by at least 15% and increased fruit yield of tomato by at least 32%, compared to use of the pre-transplant herbicides alone, across both years of study. The greatest tomato fruit yield of 12.2 t/ha was obtained with pre-transplant application of butachlor at 2.0 kg a.i/ha followed by supplementary hoe weeding at 6 WAT, averaged for both years. In general, this study suggests that increased application of N up to 90 kg/ha, and complementary weed control by pre-transplant herbicide and hoe weeding at 6 WAT would improve yield of tomato in the forestsavanna transition zone of Nigeria

Effects of Pig Dung and Poultry Manure With Plant Residues on the Production of Some Fruit Vegetables

The field experiment was carried out during the raining season at Organic Agricultural Farm of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta. Nigeria. Compost was prepared using pig dung and poultry manure with plant residue. It was applied at the rate of 0 and 10t ha-1 replicated three times. The observation on growth parameter showed that at 5 WAP okra with composted poultry manure was low although there was increase at 7 and 9 WAP. The observation on growth parameter showed that at 5 WAP okra with composted poultry manure was low than composted pig manure and no amendment but later showed increase in height at 7  and 9 WAP while pepper with poultry manure was higher than composted pig manure and no amendment which later increase in highest. Observation on yield parameter revealed that okra with composted pig manure had the highest number of fruits than pepper with composted pig manure. The soil micro biological parameters after adding compost showed that pepper with no amendment had the highest viable counts than pepper composted pig dung and poultry manure than okra with composted pig manure and no amendment. Fungal counts were high in un-amended soil planted with pepper than all other treatments. Microbial biomass carbon was high in soil amended with composted poultry manure planted with okra than all other treatment. Microbial biomass phosphorus was high in soil amended with poultry manure planted with okra than other treatments and microbial biomass nitrogen was high in soil amended with poultry manure planted with pepper and that of okra with pig manure. The soil microbiological parameters were affected by treatments

Building an Ontology-Based Framework for Tourism Recommendation Services

The tourism product has an intangible nature in that customers cannot physically evallfate the services on offer until practically experienced. This makes having access to ;credible;"i\nd authentic information about tourism products before the actual experience very valuable. An Ontology being a formal, explicit specification of concepts of a domain provides a viable platform for the development of credible knowledge-based tourism information services. In this paper, we present an approach aimed at enabling assorted intelligent reco=endations services in tourism support systems using ontologies. A suite of tourism ontologies was developed and engaged to enable a prototypical e-tourism system with various knowledge-based reco=endation capabilities. A usability evaluation of the system yields encouraging results as a demonstration of the viability of our approach