• ASHC blogs: Movies & SMS inform soy farmers in N Ghana and Campaign-based approaches in development;
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My first paper ‘Grain legume cultivation and children’s dietary diversity in smallholder farming households in rural Ghana and Kenya’ was just published in Springer’s journal Food Security! Currently, I am finalising my second paper sharing results of our dietary gap assessment in northern Ghana.

One of my PhD research activities included trials that assessed the effect of mineral fertilizers (N, P, K and their combination) and manure (0, 2 and 5 t ha-1) application on climbing bean yields. This study was carried out in two sites of the Northern Province of Rwanda, which is the major climbing bean growing area in the country. As part of this work, I evaluated the response of mineral fertilizer to manure application, the role of fertilizer and manure on shoot N and P uptake.

Soyabean is an important crop in the agriculture-led economy of Zimbabwe and production is supported by inoculation with rhizobia. Rhizobia are soil bacteria that have the ability to form symbioses with legumes and fix nitrogen within novel structures called nodules. This obviates the need for nitrogen fertilizer, which is expensive and difficult to manage. While rhizobia are found in many soils, any given population must be screened in order to select individual isolates with superior nitrogen fixation abilities and other desirable traits.

Amaral Machaculeha Chibeba, from Mozambique, was awarded a PhD fellowship by the Wageningen University in 2012 under the N2Africa Project. The four-year studies were conducted under the supervision of Dr. Maria de Fátima Guimarães from Londrina State University (Brazil), Dr. Mariangela Hungria from Embrapa (Brazil) and Dr. Stephen Kyei-Boahen from IITA (Mozambique) between June 2012 and September 2016. During the last 12 months the awardee worked on revising two articles of his already defended PhD Thesis.

Introduction

Smallholder farmers in the Guinea savanna agroecological zone of northern Ghana practise maize-grain legume intercropping to mitigate the risks of crop failure in sole cropping, and to safeguard household food, nutrition and income security. The productivity of maize-grain legume intercrops is influenced by soil fertility status and the spatial arrangement of the intercrop components. Although maize-grain legume intercrops have been studied in the Guinea savanna, these have been limited to distinct alternate arrangements on experimental stations.

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) are the most important grain legumes in Ethiopia. Most of the Ethiopian soils are deficient of soil nitrogen, thereby reducing crop production far below potential. However, common bean (hereafter referred to as “bean”) and chickpea can form symbiotic associations with soil bacteria called rhizobia and fix atmospheric nitrogen inside a root nodule. The fixed nitrogen is then used for growth and development of the plant.

Climbing beans are a new crop for farmers in Kapchorwa district, on the northern slopes of Mt Elgon in Uganda. I assessed the effects of the introduction and expansion of climbing bean cultivation at the farm level: what contribution do climbing bean have to food self-sufficiency and income, and what are trade-offs in terms of investment costs and labour.