Push-pull deals with pests and improves soils. Validated RNRRS Output.
Abstract
This is one of 280 summaries describing key outputs from the projects run by DFID's 10-year Renewable Natural Resources Research Strategy (RNRRS) programmes.
Summary for Project titles: R8449: Promotion and dissemination of integrated pest and soil fertility management strategies to combat striga, stemborers and declining soil fertility in the Lake Victoria basin and R8412: Decision support frameworks for weed management in lowland rice in Bangladesh.
'Push-pull' pest management means growing plants that repel pests together with those that attract and kill them. One of these partnerships, Napier grass and the legume Desmodium, prevent stemborer and witchweed in maize. These push-pull partners are also good fodder crops and improve soil fertility. Other integrated pest and soil management strategies proven in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Ethiopia and Nigeria are now available for small farmers to improve mixed maize-livestock systems—crop rotation, intercropping, manure and fertilizer, dual-purpose grain legumes and resistant varieties. Over 6000 smallholders in Kenya and Tanzania already use environmentally friendly push-pull methods to control witchweed and stemborer, improve soils, and grow more fodder for livestock. These technologies have great potential for other cereals, particularly sorghum and millet.
The CD has the following information for this output: Description, Validation, Current Situation, Current Promotion, Impacts On Poverty, Environmental Impact. Attached PDF (16 pp.) taken from the CD.
Citation
CPP52, New technologies, new processes, new policies: tried-and-tested and ready-to-use results from DFID-funded research, Research Into Use Programme, Aylesford, Kent, UK, ISBN 978-0-9552595-6-2, p 55.