Determinants of irrigated rice yield in the Senegal River valley

On-farm testing of a nutrient management decision-support tool for rice in the Senegal River valley

“…Thus, to achieve high yield using NMR, it is essential to sow within the recommended window. Also, since we did not record detailed information on crop management practices, poor crop management practices for land preparation, crop establishment, and weed management might also have resulted in lower yield (Haefele et al, 2000Poussin et al, 2003). Haefele et al (2000Haefele et al ( , 2001 report that improved weed management practices resulted in yield increase of about 1 t/ha in the SRV.…”

“…Average rice yield is generally high in both wet and dry seasons at 5.4 and 6.6 t/ha, respectively; however, there is large variation among farmers (e.g. Wopereis et al, 1999;Poussin et al, 2003). Wopereis et al (1999) report that yield gaps between potential yield simulated by the ecophysiological crop model ORYZA_S (Dingkuhn, 1995;Dingkuhn and Sow, 1997) and actual yields obtained by farmers ranged from 1.8 to 8.2 t/ha, suggesting that there was large scope for improving rice yield in this area.…”

“…Wopereis et al (1999) report that yield gaps between potential yield simulated by the ecophysiological crop model ORYZA_S (Dingkuhn, 1995;Dingkuhn and Sow, 1997) and actual yields obtained by farmers ranged from 1.8 to 8.2 t/ha, suggesting that there was large scope for improving rice yield in this area. It has been reported that farmers generally did not follow recommended sowing time, fertilizer rates, and timings -they generally sowed late, applied late and in excess Poussin et al, 2003;Tanaka et al, 2015). Following these findings, Haefele et al (2000Haefele et al ( , 2001 conducted on-farm trials and found that improved nutrient management increased yields by about 1 t/ha in farmers' fields.…”

Performance of small reservoir irrigated schemes in the Upper Volta basin: Case studies in Burkina Faso and Ghana

“…The low agricultural performances of these two irrigation schemes are not exceptional for West African reservoirs (Ofusu et al, 2010) or irrigations systems (Poussin et al, 2003;Poussin et al, 2005). Farmers' practices are suboptimal with respect to potential crop growth and the efficiency of inputs for many reasons.…”

Using farmer knowledge to combat low productive spots in rice fields of a Sahelian irrigation scheme

“…Wopereis et al, 1999;Haefele et al, 2000Haefele et al, , 2002Poussin and Boivin, 2002;Poussin et al, 2003;Rigourd et al, 2002;Van Asten et al, 2003b) proposed that small rice yields in Sahelian irrigation schemes were often related to suboptimal crop and soil management practices. These authors related suboptimal management to a multitude of socioeconomic and biophysical constraints, both at plot and scheme level.…”