{"title":"Weeding force saving to improve profitability of cassava-legumes cropping systems in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.cropro.2024.106958","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Weeding is a common farming practice for optimal emergence, growth and maturity of crops. Smallholders in Central Africa use a traditional hoe for weed control. This is a hard and time-consuming activity. To address this bottleneck, a study was conducted at three sites, namely Walungu, Uvira, and Mulungu in South-Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), over two growing seasons (September 2020 and February 2021). The purpose was to minimize the workload involved in weed control and boosting cassava yields via time-, labour, and energy-saving through adjusted weeding. Experiments were carried out as a split-plot design with three randomized blocks at multiple locations. Weed control was assessed for hand hoe, herbicide, and single-wheeled hoe (a weeding tool that combines manpower with improved weeding precision) in a cassava-legume intercropping system. Results show that the use of herbicide translated into about 6 times less energy use than a hand hoe, accounting for a ca. 4 times reduced weeding workload, and a reduction in weeding time up to 84%. The single-wheeled hoe use accounted for almost 61% reduction in weeding energy consumed, a reduction of 40% of the weeding time, and for about 38% of the weeding load saving. Although the three weeding methods gave statistically similar yields, it nevertheless turned out that herbicide treatment achieved the lowest cost-benefit ratio (CBR) (0.2), evoking its superiority in terms of profitability over both the hand hoe and the single-wheeled hoe. The study asserted that weed control is ‘moderately heavy’ and ‘light’ when involving the single-wheeled hoe and herbicide, respectively.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":10785,"journal":{"name":"Crop Protection","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Crop Protection","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261219424003867","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AGRONOMY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Weeding is a common farming practice for optimal emergence, growth and maturity of crops. Smallholders in Central Africa use a traditional hoe for weed control. This is a hard and time-consuming activity. To address this bottleneck, a study was conducted at three sites, namely Walungu, Uvira, and Mulungu in South-Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), over two growing seasons (September 2020 and February 2021). The purpose was to minimize the workload involved in weed control and boosting cassava yields via time-, labour, and energy-saving through adjusted weeding. Experiments were carried out as a split-plot design with three randomized blocks at multiple locations. Weed control was assessed for hand hoe, herbicide, and single-wheeled hoe (a weeding tool that combines manpower with improved weeding precision) in a cassava-legume intercropping system. Results show that the use of herbicide translated into about 6 times less energy use than a hand hoe, accounting for a ca. 4 times reduced weeding workload, and a reduction in weeding time up to 84%. The single-wheeled hoe use accounted for almost 61% reduction in weeding energy consumed, a reduction of 40% of the weeding time, and for about 38% of the weeding load saving. Although the three weeding methods gave statistically similar yields, it nevertheless turned out that herbicide treatment achieved the lowest cost-benefit ratio (CBR) (0.2), evoking its superiority in terms of profitability over both the hand hoe and the single-wheeled hoe. The study asserted that weed control is ‘moderately heavy’ and ‘light’ when involving the single-wheeled hoe and herbicide, respectively.
期刊介绍:
The Editors of Crop Protection especially welcome papers describing an interdisciplinary approach showing how different control strategies can be integrated into practical pest management programs, covering high and low input agricultural systems worldwide. Crop Protection particularly emphasizes the practical aspects of control in the field and for protected crops, and includes work which may lead in the near future to more effective control. The journal does not duplicate the many existing excellent biological science journals, which deal mainly with the more fundamental aspects of plant pathology, applied zoology and weed science. Crop Protection covers all practical aspects of pest, disease and weed control, including the following topics:
-Abiotic damage-
Agronomic control methods-
Assessment of pest and disease damage-
Molecular methods for the detection and assessment of pests and diseases-
Biological control-
Biorational pesticides-
Control of animal pests of world crops-
Control of diseases of crop plants caused by microorganisms-
Control of weeds and integrated management-
Economic considerations-
Effects of plant growth regulators-
Environmental benefits of reduced pesticide use-
Environmental effects of pesticides-
Epidemiology of pests and diseases in relation to control-
GM Crops, and genetic engineering applications-
Importance and control of postharvest crop losses-
Integrated control-
Interrelationships and compatibility among different control strategies-
Invasive species as they relate to implications for crop protection-
Pesticide application methods-
Pest management-
Phytobiomes for pest and disease control-
Resistance management-
Sampling and monitoring schemes for diseases, nematodes, pests and weeds.