The homegardens are characterised by an intensive integration of numerous multipurpose trees and shrubs with food crops and animals, simultaneously on the same unit of land.The Chagga are skilled farmers with an intimate knowledge of the crops and their ecological requirements. They have a good idea of functions/uses of the plant species on their farms. The large species diversity provides both subsistence and cash crops. It enables the farmer to keep his management options open and provides insurance against drought, pest and economic risks.

The water dynamics of cropping systems containing mixtures of Gliricidia sepium (Jacq.) Walp trees with maize (Zea mays L.) and/ or pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan L.) were examined during three consecutive cropping seasons. The trees were pruned before and during each cropping season, but were left unpruned after harvesting the maize; prunings were returned to the cropping area in all agroforestry systems to provide green leaf manure. The hypothesis was that regular severe pruning of the trees would minimise competition with crops for soil moisture and enhance their growth by providing additional nutrients. Neutron probe measurements were used to determine spatial and temporal changes in soil moisture content during the 1997/98, 1998/ 99 and 1999/00 cropping seasons for various cropping systems. These included gliricidia intercropped with maize, with and without pigeonpea, a maize + pigeonpea intercrop, sole maize, sole pigeonpea and sole gliricidia. Soil water content was measured to a depth of 150 cm in all treatments at 4-6 week intervals during the main cropping season and less frequently at other times. Competition for water was apparently not a critical factor in determining crop performance as rainfall exceeded potential evaporation during the cropping season in all years. The distribution of water in the soil profile was generally comparable in all cropping systems, implying there was no spatial complementarity in water abstraction by tree and crop roots. However, available soil water content at the beginning of the cropping season was generally lower in the tree-based systems, suggesting that the trees continued to deplete available soil water during the dry season. The results show that, under rainfall conditions typical of southern Malawi, the soil profile contains sufficient stored water during the dry season (ca. 75-125 mm) to support the growth of gliricidia and pigeonpea, and that gliricidia trees pruned before and during the cropping season did not deleteriously compete for water with associated crops. Water use efficiency also appeared to be higher in the tree-based systems than in the Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006 sole maize and maize + pigeonpea treatments, subject to the proviso that the calculations were based on changes in soil water content rather than absolute measurements of water uptake by the trees and crops.

No abstract

No abstract

The biomass of a six-year-old plantation of Prosopis juliflora was determined using simple linear regressions of (y) the tree components: stem (over bark), large branches, small branches and leaves on (x), diameter at the base of the trees. Similar regressions were used to estimate height and volume produced by both stem and large branches. Macronutrient concentrations in the different tree components were determined and multiplied by the appropriate total dry weights to obtain total contents per hectare. The total stem volume (at age 6) was 209 m3/ha and large branch volume was 75 m3/ha. Total biomass was 216 tons/ha. Over 77% of the total biomass was accounted for by stem and large branches. Nevertheless, the leaves plus small branches (making 22.6% of the biomass) contained over 50% of the total pool of the individual nutrients N, P, K and Mg. The implications of this finding on site depletion due to total tree use as fuelwood and fodder is discussed.