Manuel Reyes Reyes

Kansas State University | KSU · Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab

This study aimed to investigate the impacts of the conservation agriculture production system, CAPS, and conventional tillage production system, CTPS, on agricultural water management and soil nutrient improvement in Ethiopia. A total of 15 field experimental plots, each consisting of 100 m2; were established for the two farming systems, CAPS and C...

The determination of changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) content under different cropping systems is necessary for policy development oriented towards soil conservation, C sequestration, and future C credit markets. The aim of this study was to generate an open SOC dataset resulting from a systematic literature search related to the agricultural s...

Irrigation is widely considered a potential means to improve agricultural productivity, nutrition, and income, as farmers can carry out farming and production year-round. However, the feasibility of irrigation technologies is highly dependent on the long-term economic return farmers achieve. Solar-based irrigation could address the challenges of un...

Study region: Robit Bata and Dengeshita watersheds, Upper Blue Nile basin, Ethiopia Study focus: Sustainable development of groundwater in the Ethiopian Highlands requires recharge measurements. The Water Table Fluctuation (WTF) method has been used to measure recharge. Lateral flow in sloping hillside aquifers violates the assumptions on which the...

Several technologies have been provided to farmers to increase production under the rain-fed systems of Ethiopia. However, much attention has been focused on drought emergency relief and associated interventions. Conservation agriculture (CA), among others, has been recently encouraged as part of the sustainable intensification technology in the Et...

Agriculture in the Southeast Asia region has been changing from traditional subsistence farming to modern commercial farming practices at various rates and this has led to specialized commercialized farming with mechanization, intensive tillage, and increased agrochemical use. The use of high inputs and labor-saving technologies has resulted in ser...

Soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merr) is an important crop, as both food for humans and feed for livestock in Cambodia, but the yields are low, due to use of low yielding genotypes and limited use of inputs. This study aimed to investigate the effects of different genotypes and different N and P fertilizer sources on growth, seed yield, and seed protein...

The main objective of this research was to evaluate land use and land cover (LULC) change in Battambang province of Cambodia over the last two decades. The LULC maps for 1998, 2003, 2008, 2013 and 2018 were produced from Landsat satellite imagery using the supervised classification technique with the maximum likelihood algorithm. Each map consisted...

In Cambodia, labour movement from on-farm towards off-farm jobs is one of the causes of reduced availability of agricultural workers. Conventional vegetable production requires a lot of strenuous labour for land preparation. Conservation agriculture (CA) has been promoted globally as one of the options to enhance soil, water, and biodiversity healt...

Citation: Yimam, A.Y.; Assefa, T.T.; Sishu, F.K.; Tilahun, S.A.; Reyes, M.R.; Prasad, P.V.V. Estimating Surface and Groundwater Irrigation Potential under Different Conservation Agricultural Practices and Irrigation Systems in the Ethiopian Highlands.

A study was undertaken in Koun Mom district of Ratanakiri province in Cambodia to analyze the perceptions of the current status and constraints to soybean production and identify solutions to improve production and the management practices. Primary data were collected by personal interviews at field level of 130 producers. Most respondents were in...

No-till (NT) cropping systems have the potential to enhance soil aggregation, providing physical protection and soil C sequestration. The existence of discrepancies in the impact of tillage on soil aggregation and soil C sequestration warrants further studies, particularly for different crop rotations. We hypothesized the following: a) NT biannual...

Highlights Soil type, operational speed, machinery weight, and power size affected corn seeding rate and seeding efficiency Corn growth and yield was affected by seeder type, so utilization of appropriate machinery is very important Having cover crop residue on the land can maintain soil moisture for a longer time than tilled land Abstract. Conser...

Small-scale irrigation in Ethiopia is a key strategy to improve and sustain the food production system. Besides the use of surface water for irrigation, it is essential to unlock the groundwater potential. It is equally important to use soil management and water-saving systems to overcome the declining soil fertility and the temporal water scarcity...

The number of local small farms in the USA is on the rise due to a consumer demand for locally grown produce such as tomatoes. These farms often use small walk-behind tractors, but most field activities are still performed by hand requiring heavy physical labor. Recent efforts from USDA have been encouraging producers to adopt no-till techniques us...

Vegetables are vital for human health and are consumed five days a week in Cambodia. However, the production cannot meet domestic demands due to labor-intensive farming and production costs related to soil tillage. Mechanization is needed along with soil quality and sustainability improvements by the adoption of CA (Conservation Agriculture). The r...

Improving smallholder vegetable farms are critical for improving food security and livelihoods of people in low-income countries. Vegetable production is labor intensive and prone to pests and diseases. Conservation agriculture (CA) and integrated pest management (IPM) practices provide options to increase yields and minimize the use of chemical pe...

Smallholder agriculture constitutes the main source of livelihood for the Ethiopian rural community. However, soil degradation and uneven distribution of rainfall have threatened agriculture at present. This study is aimed at investigating the impacts of conservation agriculture on irrigation water use, nutrient availability in the root zone, and c...

A field experiment consists of conservation agriculture (CA) and conventional tillage (CT) practices were set up in two areas, Robit and Dangishta, in sub-humid Ethiopian highlands. Irrigation water use, soil moisture, and agronomic data were monitored, and laboratory testing was conducted for soil samples, which were collected from 0 to 40 cm dept...

Water resources in sub-Saharan Africa are more overstressed than in many other regions of the world. Experiments on commercial farms have shown that conservation agriculture (CA) can save water and improve the soil. Nevertheless, its benefits on smallholder irrigated farms have not been adequately investigated, particularly in dry monsoon phase in...

The conservation agriculture production system (CAPS) approach with drip irrigation has proven to have the potential to improve water management and food production in Ethiopia. A method of scaling-up crop yield under CAPS with drip irrigation is developed by integrating a biophysical model: APEX (agricultural policy environmental eXtender), and a...

The poster was displayed at 2019 ASABE Annual International Meeting on Jul 8, 2019, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

A field-scale experimental study was conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia and Ghana) to examine the effects of conservation agriculture (CA) with drip irrigation system on water productivity in vegetable home gardens. CA here refers to minimum soil disturbance (no-till), year-round organic mulch cover, and diverse cropping in the rotation. A t...

The agricultural system in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is dominated by traditional farming practices with poor soil and water management, which contributes to soil degradation and low crop productivity. This study integrated field experiments and a field-scale biophysical model (Agricultural Policy Environmental Extender, APEX) to investigate the impa...

Limited field studies have been performed to evaluate the impacts of conservation agriculture (CA) on crop yields and soil organic carbon sequestration in tropical conditions. In this study, we used the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model to evaluate the impact of CA and conservation tillage (CT) on crop yields in tropical conditio...

Will soil organic carbon (SOC) and yields increase for conservation management systems in tropical zones in response to the next 100 years? To answer the question, the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model was used to study the effects of climate change, cropping systems, conservation agriculture (CA) and conservation tillage managem...

The study was conducted in Lake Tana Basin of Ethiopia to assess potentially irrigable areas for home gardens, water availability, and feasibility of water-lifting technologies. A GIS-based Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) technique was applied to access the potential of surface and groundwater sources for irrigation. The factors affecting irrigatio...

Free download full paper until Nov 17, 2017 at https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1VoI1cA-ISCCX -------------------------------------------------- Soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration was evaluated for several long-term rain-fed cropping systems for conservation agriculture (CA) and conservation tillage (CT) in Cambodia using the Environmental Polic...

The years of intensive tillage in Cambodia have caused significant decline in agriculture’s natural resources that could threaten its future of agricultural production and sustainability. Conventional tillage could cause rapid loss of soil organic matter, leading to a high potential for soil degradation and decline of environmental quality. Hence,...

Conservation agriculture involves minimum soil disturbance, continuous ground cover, and diversified crop rotations or mixtures. Conservation agriculture production systems (CAPS) have the potential to improve soil quality if appropriate cropping systems are developed. In this study, five CAPS including different cropping patterns and cover crops u...

This book focuses on the latest research in conservation agriculture (CA), with an emphasis on the applicability of results worldwide. Using South Asia as a case study, it examines the history and current state of CA regionally and globally, and explores the long-term impacts the adoption of CA practices has on the livelihoods, agricultural product...

The study predicted the effect of conservation agriculture on corn yield in the Philippines using the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) Ceres-Maize crop model. The model was calibrated and validated using crop, soil and weather data obtained from an experimental site in Claveria, Misamis Oriental, Philippines under conserv...

Floating Island Roof (FIR): a roof with a pond that has a floating media for growing plants that can store roof runoff and support a biologically diverse terrestrial and aquatic system. Project received honorable mentioned.

This study aimed to model and to compare the solute-transport behavior of soil under conservation agriculture (CA) and plow-based (PB) production systems in the Philippines. Undisturbed soil core samples were taken from both production systems from experimental sites in Claveria, Misamis Oriental, Philippines. A stochastic method, following continu...

Water quality in urban areas can be enhanced by biomimicry. In this study, we mimicked the forest by growing vegetables in 6’ x 3’ beds called oasissofas copying a ‘forest ecosystem’ of: continues mulch; minimum soil disturbance – no tillage; and spatial and rotational species diversification.

Intensive tillage and high inputs of synthetic chemicals are among the greatest current threats to water quality in agricultural watersheds. Sustainable farming systems such as organic and/or conservation tillage have been suggested as the potential solutions to the water quality impairment problem throughout the US. This study evaluates the cost-e...

In the US, almost every house has a lawn of about 8712 square feet. The cost of maintaining lawns is expensive and is a big part of home owner’s annual budget ranging from $0.06 to $0.11 per square foot per month. Other than aesthetic value, lawns do not benefit the household’s especially in terms of food security and income. Instead it becomes a s...

Irrigation application using a low-cost microtube-type drip irrigation system tends to be relatively nonuniform especially under steep slopes and low operating pressure heads. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of using a simple and inexpensive adjustable valve (AV) pressure regulator on water distribution uniformity of the low-cost mi...

Natuculture (pronounced “nāychew” culture) is any human made system that mimics nature in human disturbed landscapes. It is a biologically engineered system design. Ecocleaner is a name used for a rain garden, a biologically engineered depression that enhances infiltration allowing runoff from impervious urban surfaces to be absorbed, cleaned, and...

Conservation agriculture is a sustainable way of producing food. While the number of farms being converted to CA is increasing, its principles has not been known to be practiced in urban landscapes. Following CA principles (McD) of Minimum soil disturbance, Continuous mulch and Diverse species will potentially provide safe and fresh vegetables to t...

Natuculture (pronounced “nāychew” culture) is any human made system that mimics nature in human disturbed landscapes. It is a biologically engineered system design. We converted a lawn, a drug-addicted carpet that has very limited utility, into a living display of a vibrant, biologically diverse, and ecologically complex food producing, water harve...

Natuculture (pronounced ‘nāychew’ culture) is any human made system that mimics nature in human disturbed landscapes. The term is derived from ‘nature culture.’ Nature means natural world as it exists without civilization. The word culture had roots which meant: ”the tilling of land” or “tend, guard, cultivate, till.” A rain garden is for example a...

Low-pressure drip irrigation has been introduced to small-scale vegetable farmers in several countries in Asia and Africa for almost two decades, but adoption and impact of the technology have been limited due to several factors. This paper evaluates the performance of low-pressure and affordable drip irrigation kits developed and promoted by Inter...

The universal soil loss equation (USLE) and its modifications have been globally accepted as a model to estimate water erosion. A rainfall erosivity index is a key part of this equation. This article describes a web-accessible method for the automatic summarization of short duration rainfall intensity and the USLE rainfall erosivity index. We propo...

SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) has been used widely in the United States to develop total maximum daily load (TMDL) programs. As far as we know, there are no previously published studies modeling a North Carolina river with SWAT. North Carolina has 658 water bodies on the EPA’s 303(d) list of impaired waters including several branches of the...

The Upper French Broad is impacted by the sediment from agriculture and urban sources. Research is ongoing at the Mountain Horticultural Crops Research Station in Mills River, N.C. to evaluate surface water and groundwater quality from organic (managed organically for 15 years and undergoing organic certification) and conventional systems that have...

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is one of the most widely used watershed-scale water quality models in the world. Nearly 600 peer-reviewed SWAT-related journal articles have been published and hundreds more have been published in conference proceedings and other formats. The SWAT model has proven to be a very flexible tool for investigati...

Assessment of the effect of topography and operating heads on the emission uniformity distribution in drip irrigation systems is important in irrigation water management and could serve as basis for optimizing water use efficiency and crop productivity. This study was carried out to evaluate the effect of hydraulic head and slope on the water distr...

The quantitative prediction of environmental impacts of land use changes in watersheds could serve as a basis for developing sound watershed management schemes, especially for Philippine watersheds with agroforestry systems. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was parameterized and calibrated using data from two Manupali River subwaters...

Soil erosion on southern Piedmont soils remains a problem without application of sound conservation practices. This study was conducted to compare a no-tillage (NT) system with a conventional-tillage (CT) system in row-cropped land under natural rainfall condi- tions for six continuous years. Runoff and soil loss were continuously monitored from Ma...

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model is a continuation of nearly 30 years of modeling efforts conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service. SWAT has gained international acceptance as a robust interdisciplinary watershed modeling tool, as evidenced by international SWAT conferences, hundreds of SW...

A seven-year no-tillage study was conducted at the North Carolina A&T State University Farm, Greensboro, North Carolina, from 1995 to 2001. The treatments were no-tillage controlled traffic (NC) and no-tillage full traffic (NF). No-tillage consists of opening a small slit in the soil by means of a coulter running ahead of a planter with openers. Wh...

Predictions of the GLEAMS, RUSLE, EPIC, and WEPP models were compared with actual runoff and soil loss data measured at the North Carolina A&T State University Farm located in Greensboro, N.C. No calibration was done in choosing model parameters. Inputs for the models were measured on-site or were taken from literature and model editors. None of th...

This article introduces the Groundwater Loading Effects of Agricultural Management Systems with Subsurface drainage and Water Table (GLEAMS-SWT) with nutrients model. This version contains GLEAMS' nutrient component and additional routines to predict nitrogen loss from subsurface drainage. Comparisons of GLEAMS-SWT and GLEAMS nitrogen and phosphoru...

The loss of agricultural chemicals in runoff waters and eroded soil has significant importance from the agronomic and environmental standpoint. This study presents two years of data on losses of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and herbicides (atrazine and metolachlor) from various tillage systems from an experiment conducted at North Carolina A...

A multislot divisor is a device that divides water flow into equal parts, with one part collected in a tank. The USDA Handbook 224 contains plans for construction of multislot divisors fabricated from steel. With minor modifications, multislot divisors were fabricated from plastic. Performance tests were conducted on plastic and metal multislot div...

Automatic calculation of rainfall erosivity (ACRE), a procedure to automatically quantify daily rainfall erosivity values, was described in this study. ACRE was successfully used to automatically calculate the daily erosivity values of the El 30 index at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University meteorological station, located...

Simulation performances were evaluated by comparing their soil loss predictions with measured data from two runoff-erosion-drainage experimental plots at Baton Rouge, Louisiana. One of the experimental plots was surface drained only, and the other was both surface and subsurface drained. All three models seriously underpredicted total soil losses o...

At Baton Rouge, Louisiana, validations to test the accuracy of GLEAMS-SWAT predictions of surface runoff volume, subsurface drainage volume, total volume (surface runoff + subsurface drainage), and water table depth were satisfactory. Total predicted surface runoff volume for the seven-year period was 94% of the observed runoff volume, an improveme...

GLEAMS-Water Table (GLEAMS-WT) is a modified version of GLEAMS that accounts for shallow water table fluctuations. It replaces the evapotranspiration and percolation algorithms with evapotranspiration and percolation routines that are affected by shallow water table, and includes routines to account for depression storage, steady state upward flux,...

RIP (rainfall intensity percentage) and WMRIP (weighted mean rainfall intensity percentage) values for Ben Hur Research Farm, Baton Rouge, Louisiana from 1981 through 1988 were calculated. Daily kinetic energy (KE) of 46 daily rainfall events in 1987 was calculated from RIP. The KE calculated from RIP values of 46 events was not significantly diffe...

Work on vegetable-agroforestry compatibility is advancing rapidly with new findings that narrow the focus and advance the socio-economic work on the adoptability speci