Farmers’ Knowledge of Pests and Diseases in the Coffee-Banana Agroforestry Systems of Mid-Eastern Uganda

Abstract

Recent trends in agricultural research and development recommend incorporating farmers' knowledge and experience into the research agenda. A questionnaire was therefore administered to 10 purposively selected households per district in 7 randomly selected districts located in the coffee-banana agroforestry system of mid-eastern Uganda to determine farmers' knowledge of pests and diseases of coffee and bananas. Most of the respondents interviewed had knowledge of the pests and diseases attacking both coffee and bananas. The black coffee twig borer (BCTB) and coffee wilt disease (CWD) were the most commonly reported pests-by 46 and 72% of the respondents respectively. Farmers' knowledge of BCTB was significantly (p=0.0391) dependent on sex, but not age or education of the respondent. On the other hand, their knowledge of CWD was not dependent on age, sex nor educational level. For the bananas, the banana weevils and banana xanthomonas wilt (BXW) were the most commonly mentioned pests-by 21 and 84% of the respondents respectively. More than 50% of the respondents were employing cultural practices for managing BCTB, CWD, banana weevil, nematodes, black ants (kaasa) and BXW. However, more than 65% of the respondents had limited knowledge of managing the biting ants, mites, coffee leaf rust and red blister disease, caterpillars and black sigatoka. This therefore calls for more awareness campaign on all pests and diseases of both crops in the region.