“Before N2Africa started working with us in TWIZERANE farmer’s association, we used to grow crops in a traditional way, no use of improved crop varieties, or fertilizer. The crop yield was always low because of ignorance. After interacting with N2Africa technologies in 2010, I saw the difference between improved technologies and the traditional method of cropping, especially inoculation of soyabean coupled with the use of DAP and planting in row, which significantly increased our production of bush bean and soyabean crops”. This was remarked by Mr.

New agricultural technologies help to innovate and modernize agricultural production in the light of climate change and soil degradation. Research has confirmed that the addition of inoculant to soyabean can boost yields with at least 40 % to 50 % with all other factors kept equal. Another benefit of inoculation is that it stimulates a high grain protein content (up to 40%). This is a great story for Africa with many of its countries depending on agriculture. The effect of inoculants on soyabean yields is the magical story that every farmer would like to hear.

One strategy by the N2Africa project to enhance legume productivity in Africa was to select rhizobial strains with enhanced biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) efficiency from the various countries (as part of the G_L x G_R x E x M framework) for use as inoculants. In line with this goal, I isolated rhizobia from beans growing in several agro-ecologies in Kenya and first assessed their genetic diversity.

Grain legumes are the second largest cultivated crops in Ethiopia next to cereals in terms of total production volume yield and area coverage. A similar scenario is reported for annual crop residue production from grain legumes. But both grain and haulm production from grain legumes are below their potential and need to be improved through different approach like developing new varieties and adhering to better agronomic practices to exploit the genetic potential of the plants.

 Beans and maize are important food and cash crops for farmers in the Northern highlands of Tanzania. They are often intercropped to achieve efficient land use, to avoid risk and to improve soil fertility. Farmers commonly alternate the rows of maize and beans one-by-one – or moja-moja in Swahili. The practice of planting maize and beans in a two-by-two (mbili-mbili in Swahili) alternating rows design has been introduced relatively recently (Figure 1). These cropping designs are referred to as moja and mbili cropping designs (Figure 2).

Peter Goldsmith of the University of Illinois who coordinates the Soybean Innovation Lab sent us a link to an article that reports a new world record yield of 11.48 t/ha for soyabean;

Duncan Sones shared ASHC’s Northern Ghana Soybean Technical Brief 2017.

IITA news: Partnerships for perpetuity: N2Africa consolidates PPPs as plans for exit strategy progresses;

As mentioned in the previous Podcaster Ken Giller presented N2Africa in a WUR talk. The link to this WUR talk is available on YouTube.

“Effectiveness of rhizobia strains isolated from South Kivu soils (Eastern D.R. Congo) on nodulation and growth of soybeans (Glycine max)”, written by Bintu Nabintu Ndusha, Nancy K. Karanja, Paul L. Woomer, Jean Walangululu, Gustave N. Mushagalusa and Jean Marie Sanginga, has been published in the March, 2017 issue of African Journal of Soil Science.