Abstract
Banana yield and quality in Malawi is low due to drought, low fertility and poor management practices. Therefore, a comparative researcher-managed and farmer-managed irriagated banana study was initiated in 2004/2005 to develop guidelines and promote banana irrigation optimisation for small-scale farmers. Specifically, the research aimed to determine and compare researcher-managed and farmer-managed optimum irrigation in respect to banana yield, quality, income and gross margins, and facilitate transfer of banana irrigation technology to farmers. Irrigation treatments ranged from 0, 50 and 100% evapotranspiration (ET) of estimated banana ET, laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with four replicates. Irrigation was scheduled using the soil moisture balance system. The results of banana production and gross margin analysis for both researcher-managed and farmer-managed experiments showed that average yield and quality increased linearly with increasing irrigation. Highly significant differences (P < 0.001) were observed between amounts of applied water in average bunch weight, average hand weight and average finger weight per hectare both under researcher-managed and farmer-managed fields, respectively. The gross margin analysis showed negative gross margin under non-irrigated banana enterprise and positive gross margin at 100% ET for both researcher-and farmer-managed fields, respectively. Irrigation raised farmer earnings from -4 to 27 US$/day (non-irrigated to irrigated banana) and it was optimal to produce banana under 100% ET. The findings showed that banana enterprise has a commercial orientation that can reduce poverty for smallholder farmers. It is recommendable that Malawi and other countries should advocate banana irrigation agribusiness because it can facilitate the attainment of food security and poverty reduction. Key words: Irrigation scheduling, evapotranspiration, gross margin, banana.
Abstract from the paper’s OpenAlex record; open copy licensed cc-by. Read at the source ↗
The text the model read, with the source record’s inline markup (italics, sub- and superscripts) rendered and its character entities decoded; quote offsets refer to the raw text.
Claims 8
Claim · model-written summary
Average banana yield and quality increased linearly with increasing irrigation under both researcher-managed and farmer-managed production.
- Taxon
- bananat0
- Treatment
- increasing irrigatione2
- Outcome
- yield and qualitye2
- Direction
- increased linearlye2
- Setting
- Shire Valley, Malawit0
Not reportedComparator
Verbatim
t0“irrigated banana production in Shire Valley, Malawi”
e2“average yield and quality increased linearly with increasing irrigation”
Claim · model-written summary
Amounts of applied irrigation water had highly significant effects on average bunch, hand and finger weight per hectare.
- Taxon
- bananat0
- Treatment
- amounts of applied watere3
- Outcome
- average bunch weight, average hand weight and average finger weight per hectaree3
- Qualifier
- P < 0.001e3
Not reportedComparatorDirection
Verbatim
t0“irrigated banana production in Shire Valley, Malawi”
e3“Highly significant differences (P < 0.001) were observed between amounts of applied water in average bunch weight, average hand weight and average finger weight per hectare both under researcher-managed and farmer-managed fields, respectively”
Claim · model-written summary
Non-irrigated banana had a negative gross margin.
Not reportedComparator
Verbatim
t0“irrigated banana production in Shire Valley, Malawi”
e4“showed negative gross margin under non-irrigated banana enterprise”
Claim · model-written summary
Banana irrigated at 100% ET had a positive gross margin in both researcher-managed and farmer-managed fields.
Not reportedComparator
Verbatim
t0“irrigated banana production in Shire Valley, Malawi”
e5“positive gross margin at 100% ET for both researcher-and farmer-managed fields”
Claim · model-written summary
Irrigation raised farmer earnings from -4 to 27 US$/day, from non-irrigated to irrigated banana.
Verbatim
t0“irrigated banana production in Shire Valley, Malawi”
e6“Irrigation raised farmer earnings from -4 to 27 US$/day (non-irrigated to irrigated banana)”
Claim · model-written summary
Producing banana under 100% ET irrigation was optimal.
Verbatim
t0“irrigated banana production in Shire Valley, Malawi”
e7“it was optimal to produce banana under 100% ET”
Claim · model-written summary
Malawi and other countries should advocate banana irrigation agribusiness for food security and poverty reduction.
Verbatim
t0“irrigated banana production in Shire Valley, Malawi”
e6“It is recommendable that Malawi and other countries should advocate banana irrigation agribusiness because it can facilitate the attainment of food security and poverty reduction”
Claim · model-written summary
Banana enterprise with a commercial orientation can reduce poverty for smallholder farmers.
Not reportedComparator
Verbatim
t0“irrigated banana production in Shire Valley, Malawi”
e5“banana enterprise has a commercial orientation that can reduce poverty for smallholder farmers”
The same questions in other papers
irrigation · quality: general · MusaPositive and negative results
1 paper in the same direction as this paper · 1 reporting no difference from an alternative
- no effect
- positive
Claims are grouped by organism, treatment and what was measured or targeted. A paper counts as positive when any of its claims in the group is positive.