Dietary intake of vegetables is low in Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) compared to the world's average. This situation is worsened by low water availability for vegetable production especially in the dry season. However, amaranth which can be grown in the different agro-ecologies of Nigeria is a dual purpose crop with edible leaves and seeds rich in essential nutrients, minerals and proteins. The crop is also a drought tolerant C4 plant which has the ability to survive under minimum soil moisture condition, hence the reason for its use in the study. This investigation was therefore conducted to discover the optimum water requirements in a screen house, and evaluation of different moisture stress based on the derived optima in two subsequent field trials. In the screen house and field, water stress treatments varied from: -6.0, -1.2 to -0.3 bar (the control). Results in the screen house study showed that optimum soil water potential for amaranth was reached at -1.2 bar, and that variety NH84/493 performed better than the others, in all growth and yield parameters measured. In field trials, bringing the moisture content from dry (-6.0 bar) to -1.5 bar optimum soil water potential favored seedling emergence better than all other treatment combinations. However, treatment combination -0.3, -1.5 bar when the soil was initially wet (-0.3 bar) then bringing it to the optimum (-1.5 bar) gave the best seedling establishment and productivity. Variety NH84/493 grown at -0.3, -1.5 bar performed better than all other interactions. We therefore recommend -1.5 bar and variety NH84/493 amaranth for the SSA vegetable industry, especially for improving dry season productivity.
Experiments were conducted in the screen house of National Horticultural Research Institute (NIHORT), Ibadan, Nigeria, to evaluate the level of germination and emergence of seeds from the different sections of inflorescences of two varieties each of Amaranthus (NHAc3, ED82/1040A) and Celosia (TLV8, Local green) chosen on the basis of maturity period. Seeds were taken from the basal, middle and top parts of the inflorescences of the varieties of these crops grown in the nursery. Seeds from whole inflorescence served as control. A split-plot design was used in which species served as main plot and inflorescence sections served as sub-plot with four replicates. Data were analyzed using SAS and LSD (P= 0.05). Results showed that there is distinct inflorescence maturity pattern for the two crops. The basal seeds germinated earlier and gave the highest seedling emergence while the apical seeds gave the lowest seedling emergence. Similarly, apical seeds of inflorescence gave root and plumule length that were 57% of those of the seedlings from the basal regions. Maturity of inflorescence was therefore acropetal in the crops. The determinate early flowering varieties of both species were significantly (P=0.05) superior to the indeterminate late flowering ones in seedling emergence, plumule length as well as rooting depth. It seems therefore that early seedling growth which is better in the determinate early flowering varieties of Amaranthus and Celosia is a function of varietal differences as well as growth habit of the plant.
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