Climate Variability and Its Effects on Gender and Coping Strategies in Baringo County, Kenya

Climate variability has often been described as one of the most pressing environmental challenges. Our lifestyles, economy, health, income, livelihood and our social well-being are all affected by climate. This paper therefore, assessed climate variability, its effect of gender and coping strategies they adopt in Baringo County, Kenya. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used in analyzing the data obtained for the study. Findings show that there is consisent decrease in rainfall and increase in temperature in recent times. Male gender dominates household decisions and roles such as land preparation, livestock keeping/feeding, pesticide application and fence construction in Baringo County, Kenya while the female gender dominates household roles such as water supply, domestic home chores and more of agricultural activities. Livestock migration was the major traditional coping strategy adopted in Baringo County. 56.8% of the respondents shows that cutting grasses for livestock was the major short term coping strategy adopted while Rainfall harvesting and storage (5.92%) was the least adopted in the studied area. Long term coping strategy to climate variability mostly adopted by the rural populace in is livestock migration (48.52%), it was also observed here that the least long term coping strategy adopted is finding alternative job as reputed by 4.44% of the respondents. Special intervention projects such as rain water harvesting techniques, drought resistant crops, short term crops etc, should be provided to rural populace/dwellers in Baringo County, and other parts of Kenya experiencing severe variability in climate, resulting to drought

Evaluation of nutritional properties of tissue cultured sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L) Moench]

Tissue culture techniques are commonly used in plants as an efficient way to propagate and store valuable genotypes. Often, some of the regenerants differ from the parental type, a phenomenon called somaclonal variability. Assessment of nutritional value variability in crops that may arise from somaclonal variability during tissue culture propagation may have a strong impact on plant breeding, conservation of genetic resources and nutrition in the areas of use. It is particularly useful in the characterization of individual cultivars, and in determining duplications in germplasm collections and for selecting parents. The Sorghum bicolor (L) Moench tissue culture (TC) regenerants (Seredo, Mtama 1 and El Gardam) were developed at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology towards improvement for water stress tolerance for improved food production in the ASALs in Kenya. The study was conducted to evaluate the nutritional value of the parents and TC regenerants of Sorghum bicolor (L) Moench local cultivars (Seredo, Mtama 1 and El Gardam) in Kenya. For proximate composition significant (p≤0.05) differences were observed in parents and regenerants of the El‐Gardam (moisture, proteins and crude fiber), Mtama 1 (proteins) and Seredo (fats and crude fiber). The mineral compositions of the parents and regenerants of the cultivars were not significantly different (p ≤ 0.05) except for Zinc in Mtama 1 cultivar and Iron in both El‐Gardam and Mtama 1 cultivars. B‐vitamins showed significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) for both thiamine and Pyridoxine in El‐Gardam and Seredo. Significant variability (p ≤ 0.05) was shown phytates content in each cultivar. The parents were observed to have significantly higher amounts of Phytates than the regenerants within all the cultivars. The study recommends Mtama 1 regenerants with low anti‐nutrient appropriate for ASALs with respect to nutrient availability since anti‐nutrients in sorghum have been shown to impair the bioavailability of the other nutrients to the body.Key words: Cultivars, TC regenerants, water stress tolerance, nutritional valu

African Linguistics in Central and Eastern Europe, and in the Nordic Countries

Non peer reviewe

Hydrophilic polymer changes the water demand in the implementation of a dwarf cashew orchard.

Abstract: Important losses of dwarf cashew seedlings during the establishment of orchards in the Brazilian semiarid are related to the relatively short rainy season. This study aimed to evaluate biochar and hydrophilic polymer as soil amendments to increase water retention and reduce plant death in the first year. An experiment was conducted at the Curu Station, Paraipaba, CE, Brazil, using the clone BRS 226. The experimental design consisted of randomized blocks, with amounts of 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, and 4.0 kg of cashew wood biochar and 20, 40, 60, 80 g of hydrophilic polymer applied per pit, as well as a control treatment (no soil amendment). Seedlings were submitted to an irrigation regime to avoid water stress (5 L water seedling-1 when the tensiometer installed at a depth of 0.15 m reached 60 kPa). The variables of plant development number of leaves, plant height, stem diameter, and canopy diameter were evaluated up to 374 days after transplanting to the field. The analysis of variance showed no treatment effect on plant development. However, minimum water consumption was observed when 29.56 g of hydrophilic polymer was applied per pit, providing 100.0% seedling survival