Browsing by Author "Offel, S.K."
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Item Assessing production constraints, management and use of sorghum diversity in north-east Ghana: A diagnostic study(NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 2004-12) Kudadjie, C.Y.; Struik, P.C.; Richards, P.; Offel, S.K.This paper reports on the results of a diagnostic study conducted to assess the problems and needs of sorghum farmers in north-east Ghana with the aim of determining the type of research that would be useful for them in their own context. The importance of the crop and its position within the cropping system are identified. Sorghum is still an integral part of the livelihoods of farmers. The crop is very versatile and not only contributes to food security but also plays a part in the socio-culrural, socio-economic, and religious aspects of the lives of farmers. Farmers have different uses for the varieties they grow, which depends on the morphological, agronomic and gastronomic traits of the crop. Sorghum varieties introduced from the research institutions have several problems including lodging, poor grain quality, bird damage and precocious germination. Farmers have developed management strategies for dealing with some of these problems. Nevertheless, further work is required by breeders to make the varieties more acceptable to users. Sorghum production constraints identified include poor soils, erratic rainfall and pest infestation of the grain during storage. The diagnostic study suggests that because farmers produce their own seed, enhancing their ability to improve the quality of their seed would be of benefit to them. The study further underscores the importance and value of diversity for farmers. It also highlights their understanding of diversity, and management and use of variation in their agronomic practices. Areas identified for further research together with farmers aim at enhancing farmers' knowledge towards strengthening their practices in diversity management and improving seed storage practices.Item Linking science and farmers' innovative capacity: Diagnostic studies from Ghana and Benin(NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 2004-12) Röling, N.G.; Hounkonnou, D.; Offel, S.K.; Tossou, R.; Van Huis, A.The article is an introduction to a series of articles about diagnostic studies carried out by eight PhD students in Ghana and Benin. These studies form a prelude to their experimental action research with groups of farmers to develop technologies that work in local conditions and are acceptable to farmers. A last article reports on a comparison of these eight studies by the ninth PhD student in the Convergence of Sciences (CoS) project. In this introductory article, it is argued that the need to ground agricultural research in the needs and circumstances of farmers is as strong as the need to ground research in the international scientific discourse. It explores the reasons why the West African context requires careful diagnostic studies to be able to design agricultural research that is of any use. It introduces pre-analytical choice as an overriding concept to explain why choices that reduce the degrees of freedom have to be made explicitly on the basis of criteria. Such criteria are suggested for the quality of pre-analytical choices, and the paper ends by examining the way the CoS project made some of its choices.