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Aim: This study was conducted to investigate the economic implication years after an outbreak of armyworm among the smallholding farmers in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Methodology: A combination of purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to select 60 respondents in four communities of the State. Thematic information from the semi-structured questionnaire related to the socio-economic characteristics of respondents, their enterprise characteristics, farmers’ perception of significant constraints militating against maize production in the study area, as well as the efficacy of management strategies adopted by the respondents. Data was analyzed with descriptive statistics and Tobit regression. Results: The study revealed that maize farming was mostly on smallholdings owned by males within the active age of 35 years. These farmers practised mixed cropping system whereby maize is planted with other crops in a shifting cultivation pattern. Also, the respondents identified lack of inputs, lack of fund and credit facilities, climate change, disease and pest outbreak, inadequate storage and processing facilities, and imperfect information dissemination as significant constraints militating against self-sufficiency in maize production. The most debilitating of these constraints was the outbreak of the Fall armyworm, which ravaged maize farms. Information gathered revealed that higher percentages of the respondents combated this notorious pest with the use of synthetic chemicals alongside other management approaches. The result of the gross margin revealed that net return per hectare to maize production was N27, 510. The Tobit results revealed that only pests’ infestation in the previous year and age were significant with maize output loss. Conclusion: The Fall armyworm outbreak resulted in an economic downturn for maize farmers in Ekiti State.

The paper investigates the socio-economic features and poverty status of livelihood diversifiers in marginal communities of Ekiti State, Nigeria. Data were collected from a sample of 80 respondents’ from three communities selected from three Local Government Areas. Descriptive and Hosmer and Lemeshow test were used to analyse the data. It was found that those engaged in livelihood diversification were predominantly male while few of them were female. Over 70 percent of them were still in their active age. Only a handful of them could be outright concluded in illiteracy which reveal how ekiti state people cherish education. In all, 71 percent of them were married which explained the difficulty for such families to relocate to urban centers. Household size was fairly large with 60 percent having between 5-10 household members. This further makes it pretty difficult to relocate to urban centers for greener pastures. Only 21 of them operated fairly large farm holdings of more than 4 ha. The result of the Hosmer and Lemeshow test showed that all the respondents have high degree of susceptibility to change their poverty status. The paper justified that livelihood diversification still remains one of the potent tools of dealing with abject poverty and inability to make ends meet among the rural households in a country where government has nothing or little to offer as safety nets for the vulnerable of the society.

The study examined women participation in Community and Social Development Project CSDP in Ondo State, Nigeria. The data obtained from 120 women were analyzed using frequency counts, percentage, mean as well as Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Chi square. The mean age of the respondents was 42 years. More than half 56.7 of the respondents had average family size of 6 persons. Most 73.0 of the respondents were ordinary members of Community Groups and 35 percent were relatively low income earners with the average income of 18,700. About 86 percent of the respondents indicated farming as their livelihood activities. The level of participation was low with a grand mean score of 2.03 and this could be due to some perceived factors affecting participation in CSDP. Significant relationships existed between age, family size and level of women participation in CSDP. The Chi square result showed that significant association existed between social status, occupation and level of women participation in CSDP. More sensitization on CSDP projects is therefore recommended and women should be encouraged to take up leadership position. Development strategies and plan should also be well structured to enhance the mobilization of youths and middle aged women in the Project. Ajayi, Grace Tolulope | Ajiboye Abiodun | Oluwatusin, Femi Michael "Women Participation in Community and Social Development Project (CSDP) in Ondo State, Nigeria" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-4 | Issue-1 , December 2019, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd29310.pdf

Polluted water discharge sourced from industrial effluent has emerge a distressing happening owing to its harmful effects on health, lives and safety of organisms. The extent of this unpleasant situation by and large remains unidentified. Thus, in the present study, the toxic effects of effluents from textile are analyzed through Rhizophora mangle L., by leaving it to polluted surface water by effluent from the Challawa stream. An observation on the effects of textile effluent polluted water was analyzed on the growth, chlorophyll content, heavy metal quantification and membrane integrity in R. mangle was carried out. Seedlings raised from viviparous seeds (propagules) were grown in 50L effluent water from textile industry for 4 weeks. Growth, physiological, biochemical parameters as well as quantification analysis of heavy metals of the seedlings were analysed immediately after the treatment period. The results proved that R. mangle seedlings were sensitive to metal toxicity. The treatment significantly reduced the growth index and chlorophyll contents evaluated. MDA content, catalase enzyme and heavy metal content (Fe, Ni and Cu) significantly increase when plants were grown in effluent water indicating ROS production. Therefore, this result implies that metals present in the textile effluent induce oxidative stress and membrane damage in R. mangle.

African locust bean (Parkia biglobosa (Jacq.) is a multi-purpose economic tree with genetic potentials in sub-Saharan Africa. Its cultivation and production is declining with increased aging and genetically threatened throughout its natural ranges. Research efforts are needed to change the present scenario to sustainable cultivation and utilization, hence this present study. This study was aimed at evaluating genetic diversity and geographical spread relationships of twenty landraces collected from different ecological zones of Nigeria using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Ten SSR markers were screened and five primers (PbL02, PbL03, PbL04, PbL05 and PbL09) were selected based on clear amplification products and reproducible scorable bands. The SSR primers detected a total of 55 alleles ranged from 10 to 14 alleles with a mean of 11. The percentage polymorphisms were high and ranged from 68.75 % in PbL04 to 84.21 % in PbL05 with a mean of 74.16 %. The polymorphic information content (PIC) was in the range of 0.31 in PbL02 to 0.37 in PbL09. The genetic diversity and heterozygosity values ranged from 0.39 to 0.50 and 0.00 to 0.68 while the average genetic distance for all pair wise comparisons was 0.31.The first five Principal Component (PC) accounted for 70.20 % of the total variation out of which PC1 (31.50%) and PC2 (19.20%) extracted 49.70% molecular similarity. The dendrogram resulted in separation of the 19 landraces into three major clusters based on unweighted pair group method with arithmetic average. Cluster I comprised of five landraces: ABNo130 and BENo023; OYNo11, KANo125 and NiNo262 while cluster II had only one (BANo116). Cluster III was diverse comprising 13 landraces: ZANo188, KNNo162, KENo220, GMNo076 and EbNo260, ADNo64, EdNo164, KANo137, KENo217, KwNo270, NiNo241, OsNo206 and PLNo120. The homogeneity of alleles among the studied landraces suggested suspicion of loss of genetic intra-specific variation among the landraces of P. biglobosa which calls for concerted efforts toward better cultivation, conservation, management, utilization and genetic improvement of the species in Nigeria.

The study examined the two tenancy conditions in the Lower Niger River Basin Development Authority of Nigeria LNRBDA and the differences in the pattern that the farmers under both conditions use resources in the area. Hypotheses were put forward to test whether or not significant differences existed among the three types of efficiency indices obtained for each of the two tenure settings and whether the differences in the physical quantities of the resources used by farmers in both were significant. Data was drawn on 414 small scale irrigation farms under the two existing tenure Systems in 7 irrigation schemes located in 7 different Local Government Areas under the Lower Niger River Basin Development Authority in both Kwara and Kogi States of North -Central Nigeria. The result showed that there were lots of discrepancies in the t tests results of the two settings. Consequently, government did not intentionally establish one setting to be superior to the other in terms of production performance. Ajiboye Abiodun | A. O Adekunmi | O. A Adeleke | A. O Awoyemi "Impact of Land Right Arrangements on the use of Irrigation Resources in the Lower Niger River Basin Development Authority of Nigeria" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-3 | Issue-3 , April 2019, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd22927.pdf

If a climate signal could be detected at state or regional level, it would be useful to policy planners, agricultural authority and farmers to prepare for climate change. This study, therefore, employed a statistical model to investigate the relationship between the yield of cowpea and temperature (in centigrade) and precipitation (in millimeters) for the period 1961 – 2006 at state levels in Nigeria. The analyses were based on all the twenty major cowpea producing states for the main period 1961 -2006. Data for annual yield of cowpea for all the time period were collected from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (N.B.S). Data on the two important climate variables required for crop growth - temperature and precipitation - at state in Nigeria were obtained from the Nigerian Metrological Agency. The response of cowpea yield to climate change varied from one geographical location to the other. The results indicated negative and significant relationship between cowpea yield and temperature in six of the twenty states producing cowpea in the country. Five of the six states are in the northern part while the remaining one is in the south. The results of the relationship between the yield and precipitation were similar to those of temperature in the northern states, except Sokoto. There was a negative correlation between rainfall and cowpea yield in Adamawa, Bauchi, Kaduna, Katsina, Kwara, Niger Plateau and Yobe. On the contrary, increase in precipitation will lead to increase in yield in the southern part except Kwara. The time trend is positive and significant in all the cases except in Adamawa, Bauchi and Jigawa where time trend was non significant though positive..These results also show that as the years pass by and climate factors run contrary to agricultural productivities, cowpea farmers were adopting new measures to cope with the negative effect of climate change. Through adaptation, the negative effects of climate change on cowpea yield could be reduced and the positive influences enhanced. Examples of potential adaptive measures include the introduction of drought or heat resistant varieties, early sowing, mixed cropping, alteration of the tillage system and utilization of land that has been considered too marginal for agricultural cultivation. Key words: Climate change, statistical modeling, Nigeria