The experiment was carried out in the demonstration farm of Federal College of Forestry Jos during the 2019 farming season to determine the effects of NPK fertilizer rates and vine cutting lengths on the growth and yield of sweet potato. The treatments include, three rates of NPK fertilizer (0, 0.2 and 0.4 kg) allocated to the main plot and two vine cutting lengths of (30 and 40 cm) in the sub plot in 3 x 2 factorial split plot design. The parameters assessed includes; number of branches, length of vine, leaf count, leaf area index and vine girth at 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 weeks after fertilizer application (WAFA) and tuber count, tuber length, and yield weight at harvest. The parameters were subjected to analysis of variance and the means separated using the LSD (Least significant difference) at (p≤0.05). The results on the number of branches shows significant difference at 2 and 6 (WAFA) and at 4 WAFA for both treatments and positive interaction at 8 WAFA. Vine length showed no statistical difference at 4 WAFA, but significance at 2 and 8 WAFA with positive interaction at same weeks. The results on leaf count showed significance across the weeks with fertilizer rates and at 2 WAFA with vine cuttings with no interactions across the trend. The leaf area index showed no statistical difference with all the treatments as indicated. The vine girth showed significant difference across the weeks with fertilizer rates, and at 10 WAFA with the vine cuttings with no interactions. The yield parameters showed significance and positive interaction across with both treatments on tuber count, tuber weight and tuber length respectively. In conclusion, these results indicated that planting sweet potato in Jos plateau with a fertilizer rates of (0.4 kg/2m2 experimental plot) and 40 cm vine length could impact the growth and yield positively.
Cabbage is a highly nutritious vegetable, yet faced with pest challenges. At present, synthetic pesticides are the major control measure and this has some side effects such as; resistance by pest, adverse effect on non-target organisms and hazardous effects on environment. All these problems bring the sustainability of ecosystem to danger. Exploring varietal mixture of cabbage as an alternative for sustainable pest management of cabbage was investigated during the rainy (April, – August 2020) and dry (November, 2020 – March, 2021) seasons. Treatments consisted of Purple-ball, GloriaF1, Oxylus (sole each and mixture) in ratio 1:1 respectively, all raised in nursery beds and transplanted to treatment plots, given a total of 7 treatments, all laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replicates each. The insect associated with the crop were sampled using sweep net, pitfall traps and the mechanical hand-picking methods. The phytochemical components of each variety were also carried out. Results showed that cabbage which was mixed with purple-ball variety showed reduced attack by insects as compared with Gloria and Oxylus planted sole. This could be attributed to the higher value of cardiac glycoside, tannins, steroids and anthraquinone in Purple-ball variety than other varieties. These compounds are responsible for plant defence which may have caused the low insect population in Purple-ball variety. The yields from Purple-ball variety plots in both seasons were however significantly lower compared with other varieties in both seasons. Notwithstanding, the yield from the mixture of purple-ball with other varieties was not significantly different from others. Therefore, the inclusion of Purple-ball variety in GloriaF1 and Oxylus production is recommended as this may serve as a natural defence against insect pests. Also, the use of this cropping system is not only effective but inexpensive and safe for human health and the environment relative to synthetic insecticides.
In this research, two mathematical models are proposed for investigation of laboratory confirmed daily COVID-19 disease incidence and total active daily infectious COVID-19 cases using data obtained from Nigeria Centre for Disease Control. Due to the observed patterns in the raw data, Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average(ARIMA) method is used on the data which covered a period of 521 days (27 February, 2020- 1st August 2021). While diagnostic check of ARIMA(11,1,0) indicate Ljung-Box Q(18) statistics value of 12.544 with p-value of 0.084, diagnostic check of ARIMA(1, 1, 1) indicate Ljung Box Q(18) statistics value of 22.420 with p-value of 0.130. Furthermore, stationary R- squared values are 0.803 and 0.858 at 95% confidence bound for ARIMA (11, 1, 0) and ARIMA (1, 1, 1) respectively which are indicative of good models. Results from ARIMA (11, 1, 0) forecast show a slightly moderate upward trend in confirmed daily COVID-19 incidence in Nigeria and results from ARIMA(1, 1, 1) indicate significant upward trend in total active daily infectious COVID-19 cases in Nigerian population. Therefore, the developed models can be adopted by presidential taskforce and other agencies in health sector regarding future vaccination towards prevention of the spread of COVID-19 disease in Nigeria provided that the present general prevailing conditions of disease spread remain fairly the same.
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