Adaptation and Participatory Evaluation of Shrub Forage Legumes in Highlands of Sud-Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Abstract

Livestock in the highlands of DRC faces several constraints. It strongly decreased due to high rate of mortality, looting during the wars, lack of animal feeding and livestock still reared again under traditional system. However, shrub forage legumes can contribute to mitigate one part of these constraints and play an important role to improve livestock production. The objective of this study is to use for adaptation the improved shrub forage legumes previously tested by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) Colombia in tropical Central Asia and Latin America whose ecological conditions are similar to those in DRC. Fifteen shrub forage legumes were randomly planted. With 3 replications, nine plantations were counted per specie or accession. The cutting period was for eight weeks. The best yield shrubs were in Mulungu L. diversifolia K782, L. diversifolia 22192 and in Nyangezi C. calothyrsus. The choice of the farmers in their participatory evaluation was generally in agreement with the agronomic trial outcomes.

Cratylia argentea – review of a tropical shrub legume: Biology and agronomy

“…In Ghana, Barnes (1998) evaluated 13 woody legume species, among them cratylia, which performed poorly. Similarly, cratylia did not stand out among several other woody legume species tested in midaltitude sites of eastern DR Congo (Dieudonné 2020).…”