Improving women garden for enhancing resilience to climate change in western Sudan

Authors :

Consequence effects of climate variability in Sudan make home garden widespread practice to fill the competitive demand of Household consumption. The overall objective of the research is to improve the productivity of home gardens owned and managed by poor women in rural rain-fed semi-arid areas of Sudan adversely affected by climate change. The area of study is located in some villages of western Sudan where biogas units were installed in some households. The effluent of biogas units were used as organic fertilizer in women garden. The area allocated for each garden was divided into plots and subplots (as replicates) for application of different concentration of the fertilizer. Two types of vegetables were cultivated randomly, these were Okra" Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench" and Jew mallow" Corchorus olitorius L." as preferred by the women. The experiment covered two seasons. Applied fertilizer concentrations were 0 m3, 0.5 m3, 1 m3, and 1.5 m3 per hectare. MSTATC and STATISTIX8 program were used for data analysis. Results showed significant increase in yields for both vegetables, except Jews mallow in the first season. Okra yield increased from 0.93 ton/ha fresh green pods to 1.4 ton/ha with 1.5 m3 fertilizer in season one. In season two, okra increased from 0.92 ton/ha to 1.38 ton/h with 1.5 m3 fertilizer application. In season two, Jew’s mallow yield increased from 13.15 ton/ha to 21.06 ton/ha with 1.5 m3 fertilizer application. Combined analysis of variance indicated that there were significant differences among treatments for all studied traits in Okra and Jews mallow. The study insure optimum yield of Okra and Jew mallow area during off-season and high dose from biogas byproduct is recommended.