
Dilys MaccarthyUniversity of Ghana | Legon · Soil and Irrigation Research Centre, Kpong (SIREC, Kpong)
Dilys Maccarthy
BSc, MSc, PhD
About
75
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (75)
There is a renewed interest in ‘opportunity’ (or underutilized) crops due to their potential to bolster food security, environmental resilience, and nutritional benefits. However, low productivity, underdeveloped markets, and limited research investment constrain their widespread adoption. These crops are generally well adapted to harsh conditions,...
Composting of animal manure had been considered a sustainable alternative method for recycling organic waste. However the process involved had been associated with greenhouse gas emission (CO2, N2O and CH4) which play an active role in global warming. This study evaluated CO2 emissions from biochar-manure co-compost production. Biochar (from rice h...
Global dependence on a few well-researched staple crops exacerbates systemic vulnerabilities to climate change and does not encourage bio- or dietary diversity. The Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils aims to strengthen African food systems by promoting nutritious and climate-resilient “opportunity crops”, also known as "orphan crops", alongside imp...
Addressing future agricultural challenges requires breeding cultivars with improved tolerance to evolving climatic conditions. Many African traditional and indigenous "opportunity crops" have demonstrated increased resilience to climate hazards, yet have received minimal developmental investment. Here, the SIMPLE process-based crop model is used to...
Context
Smallholder farmers in semi-arid West Africa face challenges such as weather variability, soil infertility, and inadequate market infrastructure, hindering their adoption of improved farming practices. Economic risks associated with uncertain weather, production and market conditions often result in measures such as selling assets and withd...
Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils is an initiative led by the African Union, Food and Agriculture Organisation and the US Department of State to promote and make a case for investments into Indigenous African crops across 5 different food baskets to enhance the resilience of agri-food systems to support food security in a changing climate
Increasing temperature and frequency of drought associated with climate variability and change and low soil fertility are factors that handicap sustained rice (Oryza sativa L) production in the tropics. In this study, the growth and yield of rice (Legon 1 rice variety) were investigated under three temperature regimes T1 = 33 °C, T2 = 34 °C, and T3...
Valorization of agro-municipal solid wastes into value-added nutrient-enriched slow-release organic amendments (OAs) for ameliorating soil fertility constraints has been proposed as an environmentally friendly and sustainable approach to managing challenges associated with the disposal of organic wastes. However, for soils receiving OAs of complex...
Climate change challenges efforts to maintain and improve crop production in many regions. In this Review, we examine yield responses to warmer temperatures, elevated carbon dioxide and changes in water availability for globally important staple cereal crops (wheat, maize, millet, sorghum and rice). Elevated CO2 can have a compensatory effect on cr...
Introduction
Uncertainty in the yield of maize due to variability in weather is a major challenge to smallholder farmers in Sub Sahara Africa. This study explores the potential of combining locally available organic resources and inorganic fertilizer to increase grain yield and reduce variability in yields associated with variations in rainfall dis...
Agriculture involves approximately 60% of the population and contributes significantly to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the majority of West African countries. Agricultural productivity in the sub-region is projected to be adversely impacted by climate change. The sustainability of West African agriculture in the face of climate change depend...
The mechanization of tropical agriculture by conventional tillage has enhanced production and contributed to soil compaction, which has long term adverse effects on soil and crop productivity. Application of biochar is among the several remedial measures proposed to offset the compaction problem. Yet, it is unclear how biochar interacts with varyin...
Smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana face challenges due to weather variability and
market volatility, hindering their ability to invest in sustainable intensification options. Modeling
can help understand the relationships between productivity, environmental, and economical aspects,
but few models have explored the effects of weather variability...
Numerous biological and chemical methods have been proposed over the years for estimating the nitrogen (N) mineralization capacity of soils; however, none of them has found general use in soil fertility testing. The efficacy of a recently proposed alkaline hydrolysis method for assessing N availability in soils compared with the standard long-term...
Smallholder agriculture is the bedrock of the food production system in sub-Saharan Africa. Yields in Africa are significantly below potentially attainable yields for a number of reasons, and they are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts. Monitoring of these highly heterogeneous landscapes is needed to respond to farmer needs, develop...
The production of soybean is gaining more attention in West Africa. In light of projected changes in climate, there is a need to assess the potential impacts on yield productivity and variability among farmers. An evaluated GROPGRO module of the Decision Support System for Agro-technological Transfer (DSSAT) was used to simulate soybean productivit...
The effect of biochar on water and fertilizer use and the response of pearl millet(Pennisetum glaucum) grown on a gravelly soil (> 15 % v/v) of Northern Ghana was investigated in a greenhouse. Gravelly soil with varying soil gravel contents (SGC) of 0 %, 10 %, 30 %, 40 % and 60 % were constructed with Polyvinyl chloride columns (internal diameter =...
Smallholder agriculture is the bedrock of the food production system in sub-Saharan Africa. Yields in Africa are significantly below potentially attainable yields for a number of reasons, and they are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts. Monitoring of these highly heterogeneous landscapes is needed to respond to farmer needs, develop...
Vertisols belong to a group of soils with high fertility but poor physical properties of swelling when wet and shrinking and cracking when dry. The swelling inhibits infiltration, resulting in flooding, and limiting the production of upland crops. Biochar (BC) application has been shown to reduce the shrink-swell behaviour of Vertisols. However, th...
The agricultural landscape in Sub-Sahara Africa is dominated by smallholders and
characterized by high heterogeneity due to high variation in soil, crop varieties, and land management practices. As a consequence, crop yields vary considerably
in space and time. This study aimed at developing a production domain for different
maize varieties in nort...
The Decision Support Systems for Agro‐Technological Transfer (DSSAT) was calibrated, evaluated for three maturity duration maize ( Zea mays L.) varieties, and used to provide decision support for maize production in northern Ghana. Multi location N fertilizer trials were conducted in northern Ghana for three different maturity duration maize variet...
The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) developed protocol-based methods for Regional Integrated Assessment (RIA) of agricultural systems. These methods have been applied by teams of scientists working with regional and national stakeholders across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This paper describes the data sets...
Climate change is a major environmental stressor that would adversely affect tropical agriculture, which is largely rain-fed. Associated with climate change is an increasing trend in temperature and decline in rainfall, leading to prolonged and repeated droughts. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of climate variables such as tem...
KEY MESSAGES
• Research that links Ghana’s national and regional policy development and implementation can better support climate change adaptation at each scale.
• Evidence-based research outputs can enhance policy decision-making processes for more efficient targeted investments and implementation of climate change adaptation strategies.
• A robu...
Agriculture in West Africa is constrained by several yield-limiting factors, such as poor soil fertility, erratic rainfall distributions and low input systems. Projected changes in climate, thus, pose a threat since crop production is mainly rain-fed. The impact of climate change and its variation on the productivity of cereals in smallholder setti...
The harsh environmental conditions and poor management of agricultural fields in many parts of the tropics lead to rapid soil degradation and low crop yields, once native lands are converted to agriculture. The assessment and management of degraded fields is constrained by the low resource availability to support field data collection. Crop simulat...
Changes in land cover (LC) can lead to environmental challenges, but few studies have investigated LC changes at a country wide scale in Ghana. Tracking LC changes at such a scale overtime is relevant for devising solutions to emerging issues. This study examined LC changes in Ghana for the past almost two and half decades covering 1995–2019 to hig...
The effect of gravel content (GC) of soil on water use efficiency (WUE), growth and yield of pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) was investigated under greenhouse conditions at the University of Ghana. Pearl millet was grown either in repacked soil columns with varying gravel contents (0, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% 60% and 70%), and in undisturbed monol...
Cabbage is an important exotic vegetable widely grown in Ghana. Despite its importance, cabbage production is constrained by insect pests attack, with the diamondback moth (DBM), Plutella xylostella L. and the Indian mustard aphid, Lipaphis erysimi pseudobrassicae (Davis) as the most important. A field trial was conducted at the Soil and Irrigation...
- Soil erosion varied with rainfall and tillage practices
- Tied-ridge (TR) tillage significantly reduced soil erosion and can be used to control land degradation
- RUSLE and GUEST models adequately predicted erosion under the various tillage systems
- Soil Erosion Simulations from these 3 tillage practices can be run using RUSLE and GUEST models
The productivity of smallholder farming systems is held back by poor soil fertility, low input levels and erratic rainfall distribution in the sorghum-based cropping systems of the Sudano-Sahelian zone of West Africa. We assessed the sensitivity of current agricultural practices to climate change and to improved management practices: (i) increased...
Smallholder farmers in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) currently grow rainfed maize with limited inputs including fertilizer. Climate change may exacerbate current production constraints. Crop models can help quantify the potential impact of climate change on maize yields, but a comprehensive multi‐model assessment of simulation accuracy and uncertainty i...
The efficiency of mineral fertilizer use in most soils in Sub-saharan Africa is low. Prominent among the reasons for this is low soil carbon stock. In this study, we hypothesized that in the short term, combined use of biochar and inorganic fertilizer in irrigated rice (Oryza sativa var KRC Baika) cropping systems will increase soil organic carbon...
Climate change is estimated to exacerbate existing challenges faced by smallholder farmers in Sub-Sahara Africa. However, limited studies quantify the extent of variation in climate change impact under these systems at the local scale. The Decision Support System for Agro-technological Transfer (DSSAT) was used to quantify variation in climate chan...
Ghana is situated within varied agro-ecological zones, ranging from Coastal savannah, Semi-deciduous forests, Forests, Forest-transition and Guinea-Savannah zones. Animal types that populate the various zones vary. Poultry and small ruminants (sheep and goats) dominate the Forest- transition zone whereas large animals are mostly in the savannahs, w...
The interactive effect of biochar, cattle manure and nitrogen (N) fertilizer on the dynamics of carbon (C) mineralization and stabilization was investigated in a sandy soil amended with three sole biochar (0, 20 or 40 t ha −1) or manure (0, 13 or 26 t ha −1) and four combined biochar-manure levels (20 or 40 t ha −1 biochar plus 13 or 26 t ha −1 man...
Low soil fertility and limited ability of farmers to purchase fertilizers in the Sudan savannah zone of Ghana has resulted in the decline in the yield of cereals over the years. There is, therefore, the need to identify soil parameters that are critical to crop production, to manage them effectively and improve fertilizer use efficiency to increase...
The emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) results in global warming and climate change. The extent to which developing countries contribute to GHG emissions is not well known. This study reports findings on the effects of different land-use systems on GHG emissions (CO2 in this case) from two locations in the southern zone of Ghana, West Africa. Site...
Recommendations and decisions of crop management in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are often based on traditional field experimentation. This usually ignores the variability of production factors in space and time, and hence invalidates such decisions and recommendations outside of the experimental sites. Yet, the use of alternative or complementary deci...
The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) has developed novel methods for Coordinated Global and Regional Assessments (CGRA) of agriculture and food security in a changing world. The present study aims to perform a proof of concept of the CGRA to demonstrate advantages and challenges of the proposed framework. This effo...
Recommendations and decisions of crop management in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are often based on traditional field experimentation. This usually ignores the variability of production factors in space and time, and hence invalidates such decisions and recommendations outside of the experimental sites. Yet, the use of alternative or complementary deci...
Smallholder vegetable farmers involved in agricultural production are confronted with numerous challenges which can adversely affect performance. Farmers would prefer to adopt the most profitable vegetable production systems. A cost-benefit analysis of integrated crop management (ICM) and conventional method (CM) systems for vegetable production wa...
Abstract To reduce the risks of climate change, governments agreed in the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to less than 2.0°C above pre-industrial levels, with the ambition to keep warming to 1.5°C. Charting appropriate mitigation responses requires information on the costs of mitigating versus associated damages for the two levels...
The yield gap and variability in maize under smallholder systems in two agroecologies in northern Ghana were evaluated using a decision support system for agrotechnology transfer (DSSAT). The model was used to assess (1) the potential yield of maize (YPOT), (2) water-limited exploitable maize yield (YWEX), (3) nitrogen-limited yield (YNI), (4) farm...
Maize (Zea mays) has traditionally been a major cereal staple in southern Ghana. Through breeding and other crop improvement efforts, the zone of cultivation of maize has now extended to the northern regions of Ghana which, hitherto, were the home to sorghum and millet as the major cereals. Maize yield in the northern Ghana is hampered by three maj...
This study set out to (1) calibrate and evaluate the performance of APSIM in simulating maize response to N, P and residue management and (2) identify strategies to reduce instability in crop production, and increase the efficiency of mineral fertilizer use. The response of maize to inorganic nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) additions were determine...
Water is becoming scarce in arid, drought prone and even high rainfall areas due to rainfall variability and uneven distribution resulting from changing climate. Therefore, sustainable and innovative management of agricultural water resources are urgently required. This study was undertaken to determine how efficiently water can be managed in irrig...
Spatial variations for selected soil chemical and physical properties were examined for a landscape at Navrongo, Ghana. This was done in order to identify their spatial distribution to assist in designing land management that seeks to reduce the extremes of land productivity and support more uniform agricultural production. A landscape of 1.5 km 2...
The presence of coarse fragments can have profound impact on soil moisture retention characteristics. The study was conducted to assess the effects of coarse fragments on the moisture retention characteristics of 16 soil series, developed over five different parent materials in the Densu basin. Soil profiles were excavated at five locations, to dep...
Water is becoming scarce in arid, drought prone and even high rainfall areas due to rainfall variability and uneven distribution resulting from changing climate. Therefore, sustainable and innovative management of agricultural water resources are urgently required. This study was undertaken to determine how efficiently water can be managed in irrig...
Under low input subsistence farming systems, increased pressure on land use and decreased fallow periods have led to a decline in soil productivity. The soils in sub-humid region of Ghana are generally poor and require mineral fertilizer to increase crop productivity. This paper presents the use of Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM)...
Climate change is projected to have serious environmental, economic, and social impacts on Ghana, particularly on rural farmers whose livelihoods depend largely on rainfall. The extent of these impacts depends largely on awareness and the level of adaptation in response to climate change. This study examines the perception of farmers in Sekyedumase...
Crop simulation models afford the opportunity to study and understand underlying processes that impact on crop yield, hence, helps in designing appropriate strategies to improve crop production. The response of maize to N fertilization in a sub-humid environment was evaluated using DSSAT (crop simulation model). Two field experiments were conducted...
This study evaluates the potential impact of climate change on sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) grain yield under different crop residue and nutrient management systems in a smallholder farming system. The Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM) was used in this scenario analysis. Two crop residue management types (crop residue reten...
The CERES-sorghum module of the Decision Support System for Agro-Technological Transfer (DSSAT) model was calibrated for sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) using data from sorghum grown with adequate water and nitrogen and evaluated with data from several N rates trials in Navrongo, Ghana with an overall modified internal efficiency of 0.63. The...
The cropping systems model APSIM (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator) was applied to assess the response of sorghum grain yield to inorganic fertilizers applications and residue retention in diverse farmers’ management systems (homestead fields and bush farms). The model was parameterized using data collected from experiments under optimum g...
An increasing human population and decreasing fallow periods have resulted in a rapid
decline in soil productivity in the semi-arid region of Ghana, which is characterized by
low-input subsistence agriculture. Soils are inherently poor and contain little to support
crop production. Attempts by smallholders to increase production have resulted in th...
Iron (Fe) toxicity is a major stress to rice in many lowland environments worldwide. Due to excessive uptake of Fe2+ by the roots and its acropetal translocation into the leaves, toxic oxygen radicals may form and damage cell structural components, thus impairing physiological processes. The typical visual symptom is the “bronzing” of the rice leav...
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