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Maize is Zambia’s staple food crop, grown by farmers across the country. It is a high nutrient demanding crop that requires adequate amounts of N, P K and other nutrients to obtain economic yields. The recommended basal dressing fertilizer for small scale farmers in Zambia is Compound D, (10: 20:...

Zambia’s many seed companies are involved in maize cultivar development with the primary focus of breeding for yield and disease tolerance. Despite having high yielding potential, most available maize cultivars are greatly affected by drought and heat stress. The parental line stock used in the...

The adoption of soil fertility improvement strategies through the use of agroforestry practices such as improved tree fallows has been less common in Zambia. Therefore, several studies have been commissioned to investigate factors affecting the uptake of improved fallows. The use of improved...

In the light of increasing pressure on limited fresh water resources, the growing world population and increasing greenhouse gas emission, maximizing crop water use becomes an important topic. Considerable research is being done on deficit irrigation. However, there is limited published work...

Aluminum (Al) toxicity causes high yield losses and is directly linked to acidic soils. Application of lime can ameliorate this problem, but it is costly and not feasible for small scale farmers as they need to purchase both seed and lime. Developing maize varieties that are tolerant to Al...

The earth’s climate system has changed due to natural phenomena and anthropogenic activities resulting into increased atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gasses thus impacting negatively on agricultural production and food security. Climate change and climate variability is likely to be the...

Zambia‟s Food Reserve Agency was established by the Food Reserve Act of 1995. This act has since been updated in 2005 in order to incorporate the agency as a parastatal with the mandate to establish a national strategic food reserve. The agency is tasked with ensuring food security by being a...

Generating new information using traditional agricultural trials which are expensive is not sufficient to meeting novel agro-technologies. Planting date (PD), low soil fertility and climate change influences maize (Zea mays L.) growth and yield. Local-scale impacts of future climate change (CC)...

In many agricultural systems around the world, competition from weeds is one of the major factors reducing crop yield and farmers‟ income. To this effect many strategies have been developed to manage weeds. One such strategy is cultural weed control. However, cultural weed control is tedious and...

Nutritionally, fresh vegetables are a good source of vitamins and essential minerals, among other nutrients. This is the main reason as to why they are consumed globally. The production of vegetables faces many constraints, especially land pressure, access to safe clean water, and low soil...