Browsing by Author "Ocimati, Walter"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Challenges and Opportunities for Smallholders in Banana Value Chains
    (Achieving sustainable cultivation of bananas, 2018) Tinzaara, William; Ocimati, Walter; Kikulwe, Enoch; Otieno, Gloria
    Bananas and plantains (Musa spp.) rank sixth on the list of staple crops in the world (FAO, 2017). With a global production of around 86 million tons per annum, about 18 million tons are exported, while the remainder is consumed domestically. Though exports, mainly comprising dessert bananas, account only for about 20% of global production, they account for about half of the value generated (about US$13 billion out of a total of US$26 billion). Cooking bananas and plantains account for the other half of the value generated and, given that they account for about 80% of global banana production, play a critical role in terms of global food security and in national and household economies.
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    Fine-tuning banana Xanthomonas wilt control options over the past decade in East and Central Africa
    (European journal of plant pathology, 2014) Blomme, Guy; Jacobsen, Kim; Ocimati, Walter; Beed, Fen; Ntamwira, Jules; Sivirihauma, Charles; Ssekiwoko, Fred; Nakato, Valentine; Kubiriba, Jerome; Tripathi, Leena; Tinzaara, William; Mbolela, Flory; Lutete, Lambert; Karamura, Eldad
    Xanthomonas wilt, caused by Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum has, since 2001, become the most important and widespread disease of Musa in East and Central Africa. Over the past decade, new research findings and especially feedback from smallscale farmers have helped in fine-tuning Xanthomonas wilt control options. During the initial years of the Xanthomonas wilt epidemic in East Africa, the complete uprooting of diseased mats and the burning or burying of plant debris was advocated as part of a control package which included the use of clean garden tools and early removal of male buds to prevent insect vector transmission. Uprooting a complete mat (i.e. the mother plant and a varying number of lateral shoots) is understandably time-consuming and labour intensive and becomes very cumbersome when a large number of diseased mats have to be removed. Recent research findings suggest that Xcm bacteria do not colonize all lateral shoots (i.e. incomplete systemicity occurs) and even when present that this does not necessarily lead to symptom expression and disease.
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    Management of Banana Xanthomonas Wilt: Evidence from Impact of Adoption of Cultural Control Practices in Uganda
    (Sustainability, 2019) Kikulwe, Enoch M.; Lule Kyanjo, Joseph; Kato, Edward; Ssali, Reuben T.; Erima, Rockefeller; Mpiira, Samuel; Ocimati, Walter; Tinzaara, William; Kubiriba, Jerome; Gotor, Elisabetta; Stoian, Dietmar; Karamura, Eldad
    Banana XanthomonasWilt (BXW) is an important emerging and non-curable infectious plant pathogen in sub-Saharan Africa that can cause up to 100% yield loss, negatively impacting sustainable access to food and income to more than 100 million banana farmers. This study disentangles adopters into partial and full adopters to investigate the factors that are relevant to sustain the adoption process of BXW control practices and quantifies the impact of adopting the practices. Data from a randomly selected sample of 1200 banana farmers in Uganda where the disease is endemic was used. A multinomial logit model was used to determine the factors a ecting adoption of control practices and augmented inverse probability weighting was employed to estimate the impacts of adoption on banana productivity and sales. Results show that training a woman farmer and having diverse sources of information about BXW control practices increased adoption of the control practices and reduced the disease incidences. Farmers who adopted all the recommended control practices achieved significantly the highest values of banana production and sales. We conclude that improving information access through farmers’ preferred communication channels, having women-inclusive trainings, and a combination of cultural practices are e ective ways for sustaining adoption of the control practices.
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    Pro-vitamin A carotenoid content of 48 plantain (Musa AAB genome) cultivars sourced from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
    (Theoretical medicine and bioethics, 2008) Blomme, Guy; Ocimati, Walter; Nabuuma, Deborah; Sivirihauma, Charles; Davey, Mark; Buah, Stephen; Bergh, Inge Van den; Vutseme, Lusenge; Bahati, Liliane; Ekesa, Beatrice
    Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Unlike in developed countries, where the main source of vitamin A comes from meat, the diet of poor populations in SSA is largely plant based. It is thus important to identify local / popular plants with higher vitamin A content for combating VAD. Banana (including plantains) is an important staple food crop in this region. The identification and promotion of vitamin A-rich banana cultivars could contribute significantly to the alleviation of VAD in areas heavily dependent on the crop.We assessed pro-vitamin A carotenoid (pVACs) content in the fruit pulp of 48 local plantains from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, to identify cultivars that could help reduce VAD, especially among young children and women of reproductive age. RESULTS: Mean pVACs content varied from 175–1756 𝛍g/100 gfw in ripe fruits. Significant increases (P <0.001) in total pVACs content occurred after ripening in all cultivars except ‘UCG II’. Retinol activity equivalents (RAE) in ripe fruits ranged from 12–113 𝛍g/100 gfw. Fifteen plantain cultivars, including ‘Adili II’, ‘Nzirabahima’, ‘Mayayi’, ‘Buembe’,and‘Sanza Tatu’ (associated with RAE values of 44 𝛍g/100 gfw and above) can be considered as good sources of pVACs. Modest consumption (250 or 500 gfw) of the fruit pulp of the five best plantain cultivars at ripening stage 5meets between 39–71% and 44–81% of vitamin A dietary reference intake (DRI) respectively, for children below 5 years old and women of reproductive age. CONCLUSION: The 15 best plantain cultivars (especially the top 5) could potentially be introduced / promoted as alternative sources of pro-vitamin A in banana-dependent communities, and help to reduce cases of VAD substantially.
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    Responding to Future Regime Shifts with Agrobiodiversity: A Multi-level Perspective on Small-scale Farming in Uganda
    (Agricultural Systems, 2020) Marta, Kozicka; Gotor, Elisabetta; Ocimati, Walter; Kikulwe, Enoch; Groot, Jeroen C.J.
    We analyse the impact of two large-scale regime shifts caused by disease incidence or climate change, and associated crop productivity and price changes, on banana-based smallholders in Uganda. We evaluate these farmers' vulnerability and assess the potential of using increased crop diversity to improve their resilience. We further explore trade-offs and synergies between environmental, economic and nutritional outcomes faced by the farmers in their decision making when a regime shift occurs. We simulate the large-scale scenarios with the IMPACT model and use the results obtained to assess their effect at the local level using the bio-economic farm-household model, FarmDESIGN. Our results indicate that climate change can lead to a regime shift that expands revenue variance, increases soil erosion and reduces vitamin A yield for farmers. Banana disease can negatively impact income levels and species diversity. We show that under both scenarios farmers have scope to reconfigure their farms and recover farm performance. Specifically, we discuss the benefits of species diversity; increasing agrobiodiversity by adding new crops increases the farm's adaptive capacity and resilience, allowing for much higher revenues, on-farm crop diversity and vitamin A production. The conceptual approach and the method we developed can be applied to assess the local synergies and trade-offs between crop diversity conservation, nutrition, environmental protection and human nutrition that farmers face as a result of global drivers. Our results offer a further understanding of how biodiverse systems respond to regime shifts, which can inform effective policy design. Our method can be also useful to help farmers manage their farms in a way to better meet their complex needs.