News brief

Please smell the roses, but don't sniff the pyrethrum

credit: Raitt Orr

In south west Uganda, pyrethrum flowers are fast replacing traditional cash crops. Processed pyrethrum forms a natural insecticide which is popular for use in Integrated Pest Management. In 1991, the flowers were introduced to the cool and mountainous district of Kabale by an American company, Agro-Management. The company now has a network of collection centres in three districts, as well as agents to advise farmers on crop quality and to distribute seeds.

Flowers are bought at around $1 per kg; four tonnes are processed every day at the company's processing plant near Kabale town, and the entire output is purchased by another US company, for sale to the world market. According to the general manager of Agro-Management, in 2000 Uganda earned US$230 million from export of pyrethrum; he is confident that the country could earn as much as $4 billion a year, if the government encouraged farmers to grow the crop. However some farmers have been reluctant to do, believing that pyrethrum plants are poisonous and reduce soil fertility, a view that the company agents are working hard to challenge.

In Kenya, despite a severe drought, exports of cut flowers were up by over a thousand tonnes on the previous year, setting a new record, and earning the country over US$100 million a year. Roses continued to dominate, accounting for around three-quarters of all flowers exported, while carnations also showed strong growth of 32%. According to Martin Mulandi of the Kenya Flower Council, the good results suggest that, even in dry years, growers are able to maintain their output, indicating the resilience of the industry.

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More rice from less

Two changes to rice transplanting have increased yield by 50%. In Bangladesh, for instance, the System for Rice Intensification has increased yield from 4 to 6 tonnes per hectare and reduced seed required for planting by 80%. Instead of transplanting with six or seven seedlings to each 'hill' 15-20 cms apart, with seedlings 35-60 days old, the SRI technique, developed at the Madagascar Rice Research Institute, uses seedlings only 15-20 days old, with only one seedling per position and the seedlings 30 cms apart.

Two aspects of management are critical for success: the young transplants, less robust than older seedlings, must be replanted within 30 minutes of being lifted from nursery beds. Second, water must be maintained at 4 cms until panicle initiation, to encourage tillering. After panicle initiation the water depth must be increased to 7.5-10 cms in order to discourage further tillering.

The wider spacing results in increased ventilation and a significant reduction in shelter for pests. Added advantages are the reduced seed rate and increase in yield. The extra requirements are for training transplanters and more precise management of water.

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A research resource

Information about all DFID-funded projects with a natural resources and environment component is available on the NARSIS website at www.narsis.org, which has recently been restructured. Information can be accessed on projects on key issues e.g. livestock, aquaculture, natural resource systems; or on projects in a specific country or region. The database includes over 6500 records of projects with full background details of the project area, project funding, intended and actual project outputs and contact details for partner organizations. An updated CD-ROM version (Edition 4) has also been released and is available free of charge from the Rural Livelihoods Department, DFID.
Email: Dylan Winder

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Putting off the pod borers

Every year more than $1 billion of pigeonpea and chickpea harvests are eaten by Helicoverpa armigera caterpillars, better known as pod borers. Wild pea relatives however are usually ignored by the insects, the female moths preferring to lay their eggs on the domestic varieties, which then become food for the brood. The reason behind their choice has been the subject of a joint research project of ICRISAT, the Natural Resources Institute and Jodrell Laboratory, supported by the UK's Department for International Development. By exposing the caterpillars and moths to particular parts and chemical extracts from the wild and domesticated plants, in order to find out what, to a pod borer, tastes good and what does not.

Findings so far suggest that certain compounds found in the pod surface of domestic varieties stimulate the pod borers' appetite, and certain volatiles released by the domestic peas attract the mother moths. Both of these substances were absent in the wild peas, which did however contain double the quantity of an antifeedant substance, and also grew spiky hairs that acted as a physical barrier to the insect larvae. The next stage of the project will be to identify the genes that control these unpalatable features and attempt to insert them into domestic peas. It remains to be seen whether what tastes nasty to borers will taste equally nasty to us.
Email:icrisat@cgiar.org

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Cleaning up the pesticide dumps

A new report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation reveals that over 500,000 tonnes of unused pesticides are lying in waste dumps in developing countries, five times more than was previously estimated. The report writers found that many waste dumps were located in the centre of villages, close to wells and food stores, and in areas where children played. Security around the dumps was often non-existent. Chemicals leaking from corroded containers threaten large areas with contamination, and are poisoning local people through their crops, their water sources and the air. Many pesticides have a fairly short shelf life, and break down into by-products more dangerous than the original substances.

With safe disposal costing around US$3 per kg or litre, the FAO has called on the pesticide industry to help governments and aid agencies in paying the bill. A clean up project in Ethiopia is currently removing 3000 tonnes of chemicals from 900 sites, which will be shipped to Finland for incineration. The cost is estimated at US$8 million, and so far half of this has been provided by the Netherlands, the US and Sweden. The FAO has asked chemical companies represented by the Global Crop Protection Federation to support this and other programmes.

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Six foot under the best place for sorghum?

Innovative ways to improve the storage of sorghum developed by farmers in Sudan, are now being tested to find out the applicability for wider use in cracking clay soils under semi-arid conditions. Traditionally farmers in Jebel Muoya, the Blue Nile area of Sudan, store sorghum in deep pits called matmuras, and the grain acts like a bank account, to be borrowed from at the beginning of the planting season when the need for cash is high.

The farmers found that by adding pit linings of chaff, and making the pits wider and shallower, they kept the grain dryer and increased the temperature of the stored sorghum. These two factors worked to reduce the number of pests, lengthen the period that grain could be stored, and substantially improve the grain quality at the end of the storage period. With increasing climate variability and more frequent failure of rains, the need for long term storage has become increasingly important for farmers in dry areas, both as a ready source of money, and for their own food security when harvests fail.
Email: Nageeb Ibrahim Bakheit or Ahmed el-Tayeb Abdalla

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Putting the 'lake' back into Lake Chilwa

Communities living around Lake Chilwa in southern Malawi have joined forces and ideas to protect their fragile wetland. In 1997 the lake, which forms part of an internationally important wetland, dried up, partly as a result of coastal agriculture of rice and maize. Now, in partnership with government and community based organisations, the villagers have engaged in a number of projects in order to manage soil, tree and fish resources. Watchdog groups have been set up to monitor the levels of fishing and deforestation, to plant more trees, and to review farming methods. Lake Chilwa supports large numbers of plant and animal species, including water fowl, and has also in the past supplied up to 20% of Malawi's fish, a vital resource in a country where fish is the only affordable source of animal protein for the majority of the population.

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Breeding for aggression in the gentle lentil

credit: ICARDA

Last year tens of thousands of farmers in Bangladesh planted new, disease-resistant varieties of lentils, and benefited from harvests of up to 40% greater than normal (see also Raising the pulse rate in Bangladesh). The new varieties were developed following some determined detective work by ICARDA plant breeder Willie Erskine. In tracing the history of lentil growing in South Asia, Erskine found that lentils were introduced to India and Bangladesh around a thousand years ago, by tribes migrating from the Middle East. The tribes brought their naturally disease-resistant varieties of lentil with them. However, only a few of their lentil varieties could survive the different climatic conditions found in South Asia, and unfortunately the ones that did were not those with resistance to disease. Hence the varieties that became traditional in Bangladesh on average only yielded half as much as their middle eastern cousins.

Putting the middle eastern disease resistance back into the Bangladeshi varieties was difficult, not least because the plants flower at different times. However under laboratory conditions, geneticists at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute were able to force them to flower at the same time, and so produce genetic crosses, known as Barimasur varieties. In 2000 around a quarter of the lentil crop came from the new varieties, and the lentils are now the target of a huge education campaign. The goal is to have them planted throughout the country in the next five years.
Email: s.varma@cgiar.org

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Farmers' voices: from field to air

'In the field' is the series title of twelve radio programmes made by the BBC and first broadcast on the World Service between January and March this year. The programmes are available on the BBC website where they may be listened to in Real Audio . Recorded on location in Africa, Asia and Latin America, each show how a specific problem has been tackled - winter scarcity of fodder in Rajasthan, for example - and features the people involved telling their own story. Most of the projects featured were funded by DFID, mainly through the Renewable Natural Resources Research Programme, the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich being the research partner.

A 34 page booklet provides colourful background notes to each of the programmes and also includes two sections on issues basic to the sustainable livelihoods approach to development. The programmes and notes are available to organizations wishing to use the material for teaching purposes. In addition, the BBC will make the programmes available for re-broadcasting.
For further information, contact Dr Monica Janowski.
Programme notes available at: http://www.nri.org/InTheField/and Livelihoods Connect

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Responding to AIDS: Land rights for widows and orphans

World-wide it is estimated that 36 million people are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS; 24 million of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. According to a new FAO report, the labour force in the worst affected countries may be reduced by a quarter by 2020, challenging aid agencies and governments to re-think their development strategies. Many of the dying are younger people, the breadwinners on whom families depend, and the more mobile people who also tend to be the better trained. This of course has a devastating impact on nutrition, health and education throughout the population.

The report charts the downward spiral of welfare that begins when the first adult in a household falls ill: "There is increased spending for health care and decreased productivity. Food production and income drop dramatically as more adults are affected. Once savings are gone, the family seeks support from relatives, borrows money or sells its productive assets". The report advocates the review of laws and practices concerning access to land and resources to ensure that the livelihoods of widows, orphans, and other AIDS- affected households are protected. It also recommends training agricultural extension workers to assist households and communities who have lost family members, and the establishment of food security and nutrition programmes to support them.

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Stirring up cocoa in Uganda

An NGO that promotes the production of high value non-traditional crops such as flowers and mushrooms, has launched a campaign to revive cocoa production in Uganda. Investment in Developing Export Agriculture (IDEA), is working in partnership with the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO), to distribute disease-resistant, high-yielding hybrid varieties. The varieties have resistance to verticillium pod rot and stem canker diseases, can survive prolonged drought, and have two or three times the yield of traditional cocoa varieties. IDEA and NARO are also training over 2700 farmers in Uganda to restore their cocoa plantations using modern farming methods. Many plantations were abandoned during the 1970s and 80s because of wars. A cocoa fermentation project has also been launched in Mukuno district in central Uganda, to train farmers in proper post-harvest handling of cocoa beans.

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The end of the worm in the apple?

credit: Scott Bauer

Control of Codling moths, the most damaging pest of apples, pears and walnuts, is likely to be revolutionised thanks to the discovery that a scent found in pears, called pear ester, is a powerful attractant for the moths. Current control techniques rely on using a sex pheromone (see News 98-2) to trap male moths; the number trapped is then used to deduce the stage of the moth mating cycle so that the timing of pesticide application can be optimised. However the method is not very exact and growers usually apply large quantities of long lasting pesticide in order to counter the uncertainty over timing.

Pear ester attracts both male and female moths, and the scientists of the US Agricultural Research Service (ARS) believe that monitoring female moths will permit much more accurate assessment of the mating cycle. There are also plans to develop moth lures containing both the new attractant and a pesticide, a move that could reduce the quantities of pesticide needed by as much as 90%. Unlike their male counterparts, controlling the number of females has a significant impact on moth populations, and could help to reduce them to economically manageable levels.

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Agri-network launched in the Caribbean

The Caribbean Agri-business Marketing Intelligence and Development (CAMID) network was launched at a regional workshop held in Trinidad on 7-8 May, 2001. Reports were given on the current status of market intelligence in each of the participating countries; these varied widely in scope, and in human, financial and technical resources, as well as in the amount of support received from collaborating agencies.

Participants were introduced to the CAMID database that has been designed to allow the posting and retrieval of information relevant to the Caribbean, such as import/export data, market characteristics, access requirements and information on production and market supply. This database is being reviewed by participants at the workshop prior to being put on-line at the CAMID website. The potential for e-commerce was also explored and at least one regional site, www.caricomproduce.com, is already operational.

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