REAL

Assessment of measured and estimated meteorological data in terms of sorghum production on the example of Hamelmalo, Eritrea

Mehari, Gebreyesus and Kovács, Györgyi and Tuba, Géza and Rivera-Garcia, Arzu and Zsembeli, József (2022) Assessment of measured and estimated meteorological data in terms of sorghum production on the example of Hamelmalo, Eritrea. COLUMELLA: JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES, 9 (1). pp. 17-30. ISSN 2064-7816

[img]
Preview
Text
Zsembeli.pdf
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives.

Download (347kB) | Preview

Abstract

Eritrea is exposed to climate variability and extreme events like drought and precipitation variability. Hamelmalo, a sub region in Eritrea, suffers from all the problems brought by climate change, especially because local people mainly depend on rainfed agriculture. I it is difficult to conduct climate related research activities for the region due to the shortage of meteorological data. However, in 2015, a new, complete meteorological station was established providing the chance of the first observations for practical and scientific purposes. The main objective of this study was to evaluate some climatic parameters from crop productional point of view by comparing the observed values with ones calculated by the Local Climate Estimator (LCE) model. Chi-square test was used to statistically analyse the differences. Based on the results, all the studied climatic parameters, except for precipitation, were almost on a par, which means there were no statistically significant differences between the observed and the estimated values. It can be concluded that the most variable climatic parameter in Hamelmalo is precipitation and this also affects the climatic water balance hence the need for irrigation if higher yields are wanted to be achieved. Sufficient water is vital in the mid-season and the late developmental stage of sorghum. Therefore, sowing time is advised to be adjusted to early July to ensure the maximum vegetative growth and seed setting period to be reached at the end of August in order to take the advantage of the positive climatic water balance of these two months.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: climate change; Meteorological data; Eritrea; sorghum production;
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation / földrajz, antropológia, kikapcsolódás > GE Environmental Sciences / környezettudomány
S Agriculture / mezőgazdaság > SB Plant culture / növénytermesztés
SWORD Depositor: MTMT SWORD
Depositing User: MTMT SWORD
Date Deposited: 02 Sep 2022 07:37
Last Modified: 02 Sep 2022 07:39
URI: http://real.mtak.hu/id/eprint/147502

Actions (login required)

Edit Item Edit Item