Asian Journal of Advances in Agricultural Research

The world is facing two major challenges: one is to meet the exponential growing demand for energy particularly in developing and underdeveloped countries and other is to deal with global, regional and local environmental impacts resulting from supply and use of conventional energy. The cost-effective technology for solar drying that can be easily adopted among the rural farmers of developing countries needs to be developed in areas where solar energy is abundantly available. As cheap as the solar energy could be, there are associated problems with the stability of the energy for different purposes due to instability of climatic conditions. For this research, a solar powered hot-air supplemented dryer (SPHSD) with a capacity of 20 kg of sliced yam was designed and developed. The SPHSD has three sections which are solar collector chamber, drying chamber and hot-air supplement chamber which is powered with two 150-watt solar panel and a 200 amps solar battery for continuous operation during bad weather. All data were logged digitally for accuracy and test was done using yam slices. Difference in drying time and stability in drying temperature was evaluated using SPHSD and indirect solar dryer. The result shows stability of temperature in the drying chamber when SPHSD was used while the drying temperature fluctuates throughout the indirect solar drying test period. Drying experiment was conducted for 481 minutes (between 0910 hrs to 1713 hrs) reducing the moisture content from 71.91%, 72.1% and 72.8% to 27.95%, 25.78% and 28.23% for MC₁, MC₂ and MC₃in wet basis respectively. Drying experiment was conducted for 832 minutes (between 0901 hrs to 2257 hrs) reducing the moisture content from initial moisture content levels of 72.66%, 71.48% and 71.48% to 13.47%, 12.53% and 12.54% for MC₁, MC₂ and MC₃in wet basis respectively.

The study investigated the price movement and market integration of rural and urban price of brown and white cowpea in Gombe State, Nigeria. Monthly market prices (measured in Naira per kilogram) of brown and white cowpea in the rural and urban markets from January 2009 to December 2014. The data was obtained from the Gombe State Agricultural Development Programme (GSADP). Augmented Dickey Fuller test was used to detect for the presence of unit root in the series. The Granger causality test was used to test the direction of influence between prices.The descriptive statistics shows that the average price of rural brown cowpea was ₦109.88k, rural price of white was ₦95.71k, urban price of brown was ₦ 123.18k while urban price of white was ₦ 110. Unit root test indicated that the prices were stationary at level I(0) and first difference I(1). The Johansen co- integration analysis was used to test for the relationship between markets price and the results indicated that the rural and urban markets price were co- integrated. Pair-wise granger causality test indicated a bi-directional movement between the urban price of brown and urban price of white and a uni-directional movement between rural price of white cowpea and rural price of brown cowpea. There is need for the State government to establish market information centers and information centre of the GSADP should facilitate efficient communication and flow of information concerning prices of agricultural products using the mass media and social media.

Introduction: Chickens in extensive and semi-intensive poultry production systems account for more than 75% of all poultry in the Southern Nigeria.

Aims: To design, construct and test a thermal control solar heated poultry house.

Methodology: Thermally controlled solar heated poultry house was designed and constructed in the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Engineering Research Farm, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria. The poultry house consists of seven sections/rooms of which five rooms were regulated into five different temperature levels while one of the last two serve as control experiment section and the other serve as the observation section. The poultry house was tested and evaluated using developed and calibrated data logger to determine the environmental condition in the thermally controlled animal house with respect to the ambient conditions. The results obtained from the pre-stock test were analyzed graphically using Microsoft excel software version 2016

Results: The dry bulb temperature in the poultry house is 28.91±0.02ºC, 31.75±0.14ºC, 34.93 ±0.06ºC, 37.92±0.07ºC, 40.95±0.06ºC and 26.47±1.72ºC for sections with preconditioned temperature of 29ºC, 32ºC, 35ºC, 38ºC 41ºC and control respectively, dry bulb temperature in the poultry house is 20.39±0.32ºC, 21.64±0.1ºC, 19.13±0.2ºC, 17.57±0.27ºC, 16.26±0.27ºC and 24.77 ±0.1ºC for sections with preconditioned temperature of 29ºC, 32ºC, 35ºC, 38ºC 41ºC and control respectively, the relative humidity in the poultry house is 44.69±2.37%, 41.9±1.21%, 38.43±0.38%, 33.8.

Conclusion: There was little or no temperature stability in the non-thermally controlled section of the poultry house, the temperature of the thermally controlled section of the poultry house was found in a close range with low deviation from the preset temperature in the sections.

In the context of biological control against the Asian chestnut gall wasp Dryocosmus kuriphilus Yasumatsu (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) in Italy, the aim of this study was to survey its native parasitoids as well as the exotic Torymus sinensis Kamijo which had been introduced and released as a biological control agent. Furthermore, both parasitism and pest susceptibility of local chestnut trees were investigated. Surveys were carried out in 2014 in the Municipality of Sambuca Pistoiese (Pistoia), in a chestnut forest which included three cultivars: Nerattino, Carpinese, and Pastinese. On a total of 35 trees, selected among the three cultivars, 24 current-year shoots were randomly collected and examined in the laboratory. After the damage by the cynipid had been assessed, leaf samples were used for molecular analyses. Galls were also collected on the 35 selected trees both for dissection and to rear parasitoid specimens in the laboratory. The three cultivars were confirmed by genetic tests. The Carpinese cultivar resulted to be the most damaged, with highest percentage of attacked shoots (84.38%). Moreover it was also the cultivar with the lower parasitism rate (about 16%). From reared galls seven parasitoid species emerged, all belonging to the superfamily of Chalcidoidea. Exception made for the non-native T. sinensis, the other six were native species associated to oak gall wasps.  Native parasitoids were more scarcely present, while the exotic T. sinensis amounted for the 84.27% of all emerged parasitoids. Our results confirm how chestnut susceptibility to D. kuriphilus varies depending on the cultivar. Overall, the Nerattino cultivar resulted as the best among the three examined: it was subject to a less intense attack than the other cultivars, and the resulting smaller galls were more effectively exploited by parasitoids.

Vegetable often mean an edible part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed, which typically implies the leaf, stem or root of a plant. This study was carried out to evaluate the contributions of Nigerian leafy vegetables to nutrition and health. The mineral composition of four selected green leafy vegetables; water leaf(Talinum triangulare), fluted pumpkin (Telfaria occidentalis), bitter leaf (Vernonia amygdalina) and ukazi (Gnetum africanum) from two different locations (Awka in Anambra State and Ado-Ekiti in Ekiti State) were investigated. The result of the experiment showed that the mineral content of the investigated vegetables are not significantly different by (p<0.05). Generally, Gnetum africanum sourced from Awka has the highest content of all the explored minerals with magnesium content being highest (245.96±0.33).  The result indicated that the four investigated green leafy vegetables from these locations are good sources of minerals with Gnetum africanum having the highest content. Hence, the consumption of Gnetum africanum should be encouraged owing to its high content of minerals.