The importance of animal traction and defoliation of pearl millet in a Sahelian agro-pastoral system in the Seno-Bankass, Mali

Abstract

In the pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) based agro-pastoral systems in the south-eastern part of Mali weeding is either done by hand or using animal (donkeys, cattle) traction. To feed the draught animals farmers are harvesting fodder. One of these comprise stripped millet leaves. To evaluate these millet production systems including draught animals, and defoliation, qualitative interviews were conducted in eight villages in the Seno-Bankass area (1991) and day-to-day activities were monitored in one village (1992). The existing defoliation practice was compared with results obtained from on-station defoliation trials. These showed that the farmers practice of leaving the upper leaves from stalks with grains in milk stage, and defoliating only plants on manured fields, results in an optimal balance between grain yield reduction and fodder quality of the harvested biomass. It is concluded that the use of animal traction for weeding increases efficiency on manured fields only. Furthermore, a reduction in millet grain yield through partial defoliation can be compensated in at least average rainfall years by the benefits of the obtained good quality fodder by either selling the fodder or feeding it to selected animals.