Sustainable solutions to Enhance Soil health and Cowpea and Soybean Productivity in southern Ethiopia

Details

PROJECT SUMMARY

Project name

Sustainable solutions to Enhance Soil health and Cowpea and

Soybean Productivity in southern Ethiopia

Project short-name

SOSforEthiopia

AMU project code

EXT/VLIR-UOS/TH02/CNS/Bio/04/2017

Project phase

I

Partner(s)/ country(ies)

Belgium, Ethiopia

AMU coordinating office(s)

Biology Department, College of Natural and Computational Sciences, Abaya Campus

Project type

Research

Project implementation location

Arba Minch University, Southern Ethiopia

Target communities

Smallholder farmers

Project coordinator

Dr. Ashenafi Hailu

Principal investigator (PI)

Dr. Ashenafi Hailu (AMU) and Prof. Sofie (Ghent University)

Co-investigators

Dr. Mekdes Ourge

Partner budget contribution (Euro)

280,000

Total project budget

280,000

Project start

1-Sep-24

Project end

31-Aug-28

Financial reporting period

Annually

Progress reporting period

Annually

Contact person (name and e-mail)

Dr. Ashenafi Hailu Gunnabo (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Project Management Office

Office of the Director for Grant and Collaborative Project Management:

Dr. Thomas Torora (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Southern Ethiopia faces food insecurity due to poor soils and harsh environmental conditions, limiting crop production. Despite the region s potential for food and feed crops, inadequate access to agricultural practices and fertilizers hampers exploitation. Legume crops like soybean and cowpea enhance soil fertility through symbiosis with nitrogen fixing bacteria (rhizobia) and phosphate transferring arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). These legumes are poorly adapted to southern Ethiopia, necessitate the need for microbial inoculations. SOSforEthiopia aims to seek optimal indigenous symbiotic partners (rhizobia and AMF) as biofertilizers to improve soybean and cowpea cultivation at smallholder farmers fields in southern Ethiopia. This collaboration between Belgium (UGent, UCLouvain) and Ethiopia (AMU) aims to enhance scientific and societal capacity building, identifying rhizobia and AMF for biofertilizer development, and improving scientific knowledge, skills and resources at AMU.