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    Eric Munene grew up with sev­eral jack­fruit plants in his homestead in Kibugua re­gion of Chuka, a town on the east­ern slopes of Mount Kenya. However, it was only re­cently that he began to re­cog­nize it as a valu­able plant. 

    The jack­fruitis a mul­tiple fruit con­sist­ing of sev­eral small one-seeded fruit­lets. The en­tire fruit weighs 4.5-50 kg and is oval, ob­long or el­lips­oid in shape. The fruit, which is covered by a rub­bery rind and hard spines is pale or dark green when young, green­ish-yel­low, yel­low or brown­ish when ma­ture. 

    Once un­known to a ma­jor­ity of Kenyans, the jack­fruit’s pop­ular­ity has grown tre­mend­ously thanks to the ex­plo­sion of road­side sellers in Na­k­uru, Sagana and Mom­basa. For Munene, whose fam­ily had grown tired of the sug­ary fruit, the new de­mand promp­ted him to plant more trees, and he is already re­port­ing im­proved in­comes as the mar­ket re­mains con­stant all year round. 

    Re­lated News: Farm­Biz TV:Mighty jack­fruit is a Sh250k-a-year tree in Mom­basa.

    Re­lated News: The Kenyan farm­ers pi­on­eer­ing dragon fruit farm­ing—the Sh1000/kg fruit

    “Grow­ing up, we had more of the fruit than we could use, and be­cause it was a com­mon plant in our neigh­bour­hood, we did not see any com­mer­cial value in it. Often, we would have the fruits rot­ting as we fed some to cows,” said Munene. 

    Munene’s at­ti­tude to the plant changed in 2008, when, as a uni­versity stu­dent, he vis­ited Mom­basa to find fruit vendors selling a sliceof the fruit at KSh100. 

    “I was shocked that a fruit we found use­less in my home area was fetch­ing al­most KSh1000 in Mom­basa. More sur­pris­ing was the fact that there were ready buy­ers for it,” he said. 

    He later went back home and planted more jack­fruit, to in­crease his fam­ily’s tree count to 30. Today, Munene har­vests up to 3000 fruits per sea­son, each fetch­ing him KSh400 at the farm. 

    “It is a prof­it­able ven­ture from where I stand be­cause the crop does not re­quire any in­tens­ive man­age­ment. Often, the biggest task re­quired of me is to har­vest,” said Munene. 

    Yet, he is not the only one who is gain­ing from the ex­plo­sion in de­mand for the fruit. In Baringo County, sev­eral farm­ers who planted the tree less than a dec­ade ago are un­able to sat­isfy the in­terest rising in Na­k­uru town. 

    A road­side mar­ket com­ing up between Na­k­uru’s Sobea and Ngata Bridge re­gions has ex­cited the at­ten­tion of en­thu­si­astic travelers with the jack­fruit as an ad­di­tional product to the now pop­u­lar wa­ter­mel­ons.

    “We have sev­eral farm­ers in Baringo who sup­ply us with jack­fruits. We just re­cently dis­covered the fruit but it is selling really well here,” said Mary Wairimu, who sells a ma­ture jack­fruit at an av­er­age price of KSh650. The farm­ers, in Baringo, get KSh300-400 for each fruit. 

    Re­lated News: Proper plant­ing for over 10 tonnes from acre of sweet pota­toes

    The jack­fruit grows in trop­ical, near trop­ical and sub­trop­ical re­gions. Propag­ated from seeds, the jack­fruit starts pro­du­cing after six years with each tree yield­ing 100 – 200 fruits per year. The tree re­quires little care and apart from the peri­odic ap­plic­a­tion of fer­til­izer, the jack­fruit is self-sus­tain­ing. 

    For jack­fruit seed­lings and more in­form­a­tion on its care, reach out to the Kenya Ag­ri­cul­tural and Liv­er­stock Re­search Or­gan­iz­a­tion (KALRO) via phone: +254 202176420 or email: cri@kalro.org

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    With ir­rig­a­tion bring­ing more ar­able land under cul­tiv­a­tion, sav­ing the amount of water in the pro­cess is a tar­get for every farmer who wants to spend less and earn more.r

    Dip ir­rig­a­tion, which al­lows for con­sist­ent re­leases of water o tar­get plants, is one of the meth­ods gain­ing pop­ular­ity for sav­ing up to 50 per cent of this scarce re­source.

    Wyc­liffe Ob­woge, an ag­ro­nom­ist says the saved water can be used in an­other round or on sim­ilar ir­rig­a­tion field.

    At the same time the method al­lows for ap­plic­a­tion of li­quid fer­til­izers and other farm chem­ic­als like pesti­cides in a more pre­cise and eco­nomic way, he says.

    This re­duces wastage of pesti­cides, water, fer­til­izer and other re­sources in a green­house or open field.

    Re­duced dis­ease

    Over­head ir­rig­a­tion meth­ods en­cour­age ac­cu­mu­la­tion of mois­ture in the en­vir­on­ment. Mois­ture cre­ates good mi­cro­cli­mate for dis­ease caus­ing germs like fungi to thrive.

    But drip ir­rig­a­tion will limit water sup­ply to the stem base and it will go dir­ect to the soil.

    At the same time, drip ir­rig­a­tion gives farm­ers more lat­it­ude to con­trol water sup­ply. If there are no plants at given out­lets, the farmer can tem­por­ar­ily close those holes with a cel­lo­tape, al­low­ing for the water to flow to other areas in­stead of going to waste.  

    Uni­form yield

    Con­sist­ent amount and rate of lo of water and any other re­sources in­cluded leads to equal sup­ply of nu­tri­ents.

    For this reason, the crop growth rated and final yield is uni­form, the Amiran Kenya Ag­ro­nom­ist says.

    Ini­tial set­ting up of the pips in what may take more la­bour but later ap­plic­a­tion will be easy, be­cause a farmer will only re­quire turn­ing on the water tank tap on. No move­ment of sprink­lers or wa­ter­ing cans through the farm.

    Min­imal weeds

    Loc­al­ised re­lease of water also re­duces growth of weeds. Crops will also grow faster than weeds be­cause they have suf­fi­cient water and nu­tri­ents for growth un­like weeds.

    Amiran Kenya sup­plies green­houses to­gether with the drip ir­rig­a­tion. They also dis­trib­ute the drip ir­rig­a­tion equip­ment for open field.

    For any ques­tions, Mu­tune can be reached on +254715787635.

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    white flies Nathan Mala Kiambu By Laban Robert.JPG

    In cut­ting down pesti­cide ap­plic­a­tion and the ac­cru­ing costs in pro­duc­tion, one farmer suc­ceeded in vend­ing off the pests by grow­ing onions around his green­house to­ma­toes in the last sea­son.

    Lari Sub-county farmer Nathan Kimeu was im­ple­ment­ing an idea he learnt from the In­ter­net that onions’ smell can repel some crop pests like aph­ids.
    “I found out that some crops are good bio­lo­gical con­trols of pests, which at­tack com­mon com­mer­cial foods such as chil­lies, cap­sicum, Kales, cab­bage, to­ma­toes, among oth­ers. I also leant that green­house ro­ta­tion with non-vic­tim crops like cori­ander can break the li­fe­cycle of the en­emies,” he said.
    When he grew onions in the peri­phery of his 8m by 30m green­house, which had to­ma­toes as the main crop.
    In­deed on close scru­tiny of the to­ma­toes on the out­er­most lanes- those neigh­bour­ing the onion sol­diers- were free from the aphid at­tack for the en­tire sea­son.
    Aph­ids are pest that drill into the leaves of crops. They suck the sap with the nu­tri­ents, caus­ing severe pro­duce losses due to un­healthy crops.
    The leaves curl to the be­cause of the heavy in­fest­a­tion from the un­der­side. This con­di­tion re­duces the sur­face area for pho­to­syn­thesis, the food mak­ing pro­cess in plants.
    Be­cause of the ex­trac­tion of the nu­tri­ent-rich sap, some leaves turn yel­low due to mal­nour­ish­ment, which also re­duces pho­to­syn­thesis res­ult­ing from the ab­sence of the green pig­ment.
    This neg­at­ively af­fects the over­all pro­duc­tion.
    Ap­plic­a­tion of chem­ic­als in the con­trol of the pests is not only ex­pens­ive as is re­quired in­ter­val in­ter­ven­tions. But the onions are a one-time cost that de­fends the crop until the end of the sea­son and still be sold along­side the main crop, Kimeu said.
    “Or­ganic farm­ing is gain­ing fame as food-re­lated dis­eases rise. I am start­ing small and with such pos­it­ive res­ults, I hope to go or­ganic to meet the small but healthy eat­ing mar­ket,” he said.
    The Ki­ambu County farmer in­tends to grow the ‘sol­diers’ along the rows of the to­ma­toes to boost the de­fence while re­du­cing the cost of pro­duc­tion.
    Al­though he can­not quantify the money saved from the bio­lo­gical con­trol of the pests, the farmer says his main pesti­cides ap­plic­a­tion was spe­cific on other pest such as white flies and mites.

    READ ALSO:To­mato farmer lights lan­tern at night to trap more fruit flies

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    The to­ma­toes, however, never per­formed well to­wards the peak of har­vest­ing des­pite re­duced at­tack from the pests.
    Kimeu at­trib­utes the de­cline to the over­growth of the roots in the bags, which he says, hindered uptke of water and nu­tri­ents. The mul­tiply­ing roosts were scorched by the poly­thene bag, des­pite ap­plic­a­tion of water be­cause of the high tem­per­at­ures dur­ing the dry spell.
    The crop pro­tec­tion pro­grammes star­ted from seed­lings age. He grew the seed­ling in a soil­less media which helped in con­trolling other pests like nem­at­odes.
    This also gave a strong vigour in growth of the to­ma­toes since there was min­imum dis­turb­ance of the rots dur­ing trans­plant­ing.
    He also steamed the soil to kill dis­ease caus­ing patho­gens like nem­at­odes.
    “I ex­pec­ted to har­vest at least 30 crates of 32kg per week for eight months. But it never happened. The loss is a gain for me; I have learnt how to do it bet­ter in the next sea­son,” Kimeu said.
    Com­mon crop pests such as mites, leaf miners, aph­ids, white flies, among oth­ers do not at­tack cori­ander. This makes it one of the best ro­ta­tional crops after har­vest­ing the sus­cept­ible vari­et­ies. Grow­ing the cori­ander in a green­house breaks the li­fe­cycle of such pests, there­fore re­du­cing their pop­u­la­tion ahead of the next sus­cept­ible crop.

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