Eastern Africa

In the arid, low biomass producing areas of Ethiopia, Acacia woodlands suffered a severe degradation due to exploitation for various uses, and conversion to grazing and cultivated lands. However, little is known on the impact of agricultural land uses on soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN) stocks, and other soil quality indicators.

There is limited documentation of soil and water management technologies that enhance adaptation to climate change in drylands of Kenya. Rainfall patterns were analyzed in the semi-arid Machakos and Makueni counties of eastern Kenya using historical data.

This thesis focused on the use of soil and water conservation (SWC) planning tools to address two ecosystem services (ES’s), erosion control (EC) and dry season baseflow enhancement (BF). The study site was a headwater catchment encompassing Gudo Beret town located in the central sub-humid highlands of Ethiopia.

The goals of this review are to: (i) identify options with proven success and high potential for up-scaling in Ethiopian drylands, (ii) analyze factors underlying relative success in different agro-ecologies and under different institutional conditions, and (iii) assess options that may have high potential in areas and systems without well proven successful options.

The study was conducted with the objectives of analyzing and developing Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS) equation for predicting nutritional value and mineral constituents of chickpea haulm, and to determine the relationship between fodder quality and agronomic traits of chickpea.