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Kwara State University

Adesina Wahab

Designation: Lecturer 2
Department: Crop Production
My Publications
S/N Title Abstract Authors Volume Numbers Publication Type Publication Date Link
1

Soil erodibility as influenced by long term fallow in south western Nigeria

A field experiment was conducted in the humid Southwestern Nigeria to investigate effect of fallowing on soil erodibility. Two sites were selected for the experiment, namely a Secondary Forest (SF) fallowed for about 15 years as site 1 and a degraded site (DS) cultivated continuously for over 10 years as site 2. The total land areas were 525 and 562 m2 for site 1 and site 2 respectively. Twenty soil samples were collected from each site at two predetermined depths of 0-15 and 15-30cm. The soil samples were analysed for some selected physico-chemical properties. The two sites were compared with respect to soil physical and chemical properties as a function of soil erodibility. Results showed that the texture of site 1 (SF) was between sandy clay loam (0-15cm) and sandy loam (15-30cm) while that of site 2 (DS) was loamy sand (0-15cm) and sand (15-30cm). The bulk density of SF was lower at each of the two soil depths than that of DS. Soil saturated hydraulic conductivity of the forested site was 1.4 times that of the degraded site. Similar trend was observed for C/N ratio and clay ratio. The soil mean weight diameter of SF (3.2 mm) was significantly higher than that of DS (0.5 mm). Using these data, soil erodibility factor (K) at furrow slice was found to be 8.18 x 103 Mgh MJ-1 mm-1 for SF and 8.41 x 10-3 Mgh MJ-1 mm-1 for DS. Effective cation exchange capacity (ECEC) was significantly higher in SF than that of DS. This result indicated that fallowing conserves soil nutrients and physical properties. It is obvious that fallow reduces soil erodibility from these observations. Therefore, restoration of degraded soil through fallowing should be encouraged among farmers to enhance soil productivity and crop production.
Total Publications : 18