TIME | 4 February 2010, 4pm onwards
LOCATION | CSAFE Seminar Room, , Dunedin
SPEAKER | Sanne van den Dungen
Cassava has recently been under review as a potential bio-fuel crop as an input for the production of bio-ethanol. African countries including Mozambique have an estimated potential for biomass production of 6.670 PJ/yr under (amongst others) improved farming practices. Overall cassava yields in Africa are small and the principal limiting factors remain unclear. This study focused on two study sites in Central Mozambique using a series of farm surveys to evaluate the importance of abiotic, biotic and associated crop management constraints. Farm system analysis of smallholder farmers growing cassava has been lacking and an attempt was made to try and understand the heterogeneity in productivity between villages and within villages. With the help of a typology based on cassava yield per household farmers were grouped. Soil fertility proved an important explanatory variable in addition to farm management practices and provided the insight to form a yield-gap analysis for cassava to identify attainable yields in the given region.
Sanne van den Dungen is completing her Masters degree in Sustainable Agriculture at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. For her thesis, she conducted research in Mozambique on which her seminar is based. She is currently completing an internship with AgResearch at Invermay where she was involved with research on the deer sector.