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OFRA shares its lessons …

16 February 2017 OFRA: The CABI team has been working closely with AGRA over the past few months to ensure that the lessons from OFRA are captured and shared.

Working with facilitator Dr Sileshi Gudeta Weldesemayat, the principle investigators from 12 of the participating countries have been developing journal papers utilizing the data collected with the support of the OFRA project.

At the end of the workshop:

  • 20 researchers had received training on data organisation, cleaning, analysis and interpretation for publications
  • 12 countries had clean and analysable data sets
  • 12 countries had generated topics of key papers, set draft objectives and generated some data analysis outputs summarised into tables and figures
  • 18 draft papers were prepared

OFRA work shop December 2016

George Odour, deputy director of research at CABI, noted: ‘We held a very successful workshop at the end of 2016. During the event we were able to fully collate the crop yield and soil data from each of the countries and carry out an initial analysis of the data sets each country team had collected.

We had a target to identify 10 subjects for scientific papers.  In fact, such was the enthusiasm of the teams and the quality of the data sets they had, that 18 subject areas were selected.  These papers are on track to be submitted to journals by March 2017.’

Dr Francis Tetteh, from the OFRA team in Ghana,  said: ‘This training has come at the right time, some of us have been writing, but our papers were rejected or returned with comments that were so technical to us and we end up dumping them. However, with the skills we have gained here, we will work not only on OFRA data but also other data that has been pending.’

Table: Summary of journal papers being developed by the OFRA teams

Country

Crop focus    

Title of the journal paper

Main author

Burkina Faso Millet, sorghum Millet response to fertilizer in the Sahel zone of Burkina Faso Idriss Serme, Korodjouma Ouattara
Ethiopia Barley, teff, wheat Wheat yield response to optimized Inorganic fertilizers and diagnostic micronutrients in the Highlands of Ethiopia Negash Girma
Ghana Cassava, maize Optimizing fertilizer use and economic returns to cassava in contrasting agro-ecological zones of Ghana Francis Tetteh, Gabriel Quansih
Kenya Common bean, maize Maize response to fertilizers and agronomic use efficiency Catherine Kibunja
Malawi Cowpea, maize Nutrient use efficiency and profitability of maize in central Malawi Patson Nalivata
Mali Maize, rice 1) Improve Nitrogen Use Efficiency and Profitability for Irrigated Rice in two different soils of Niger River Delta2) Optimizing Maize yield response to inorganic fertilizers in three different agro-ecological zones of Mali Mohamed DickoLamine Traore
Mozambique Faba bean, maize, soybean Optimization of Fertilizer Application in Maize (Zea Mayz) crop in three agro-ecological zones of Mozambique Ricardo Maria
Niger Maize, rice Optimizing smallholder farmers fertilizer use and economic returns to maize in the Sahelian conditions of Niger Maman Nouri, Maman Garba
Nigeria Rice, sorghum Fertilizer use optimization and economic analysis for an upland rice system in the Northern Nigerian Guinea SavannaOptimizing fertilizer recommendation and economic returns to sorghum production in Sudan and Northern Guinea Savanna of Nigerian Chris Daudu, Professor Tarfa
Tanzania Cassava Optimisation of fertilizer use in cassava zones of Tanzania Catherine Senkoro
Uganda Rice Optimizing fertilizer use and economic returns in upland rice in Uganda Kaizzi Kayuki
Zambia  Common bean, maize Fertilizer use evaluation in maize production systems with emphasis on Chipata, Choma, Mount Makulu and Kasama districts of Zambia Brian Gondwe