Project Grant No: KT 0206

Principle Investigator: Dr. Zeyaur Khan

Grantee Organisation: International Centre For Insect Physiology And Entomology ICIPE, Kenya

Project Summary

ICIPE working with Rothamstead Research over more than a ten year period developed a habitat management system termed push-pull for the control of stemborer and striga in cereal-based systems.  The system relies on integrating Napier grass—which attracts stemborers as the pull factor—and a legume, desmodium—which repels stemborer as the push factor and controls striga—into maize systems.  This push-pull technology has developed as a platform technology, in the sense that it controls multiple constraints in the cereal system, particularly stemborer, striga, low soil fertility, and soil moisture, and at the same time offers potential for further intensification of the system, especially using the forage to develop livestock production.  The technology has been tested in farmers fields in Western Kenya and has found very good acceptance across a range of environments and farming systems.

The objective of this phase of the work is to scale up this management and knowledge-intensive technology from the current adoption level of about 4,000 farmers to ten times that number.   The central hypothesis being worked on is how to efficiently extend such a knowledge-intensive technology within smallholder areas in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.  Other objectives of the project include work on second generation research issues, particularly a new disease of Napier, extension of push-pull into sorghum and millet systems, and monitoring of resistance breakdown to stemborer and striga as the technology is widely disseminated.