Title:

Growth performance of Moringa oleifera and Moringa ovalifolia in central Namibia semi-arid rangeland environment

Publication Year:
2019
Abstract:

The objective of this study was to compare the field growth performance of Moringa oleifera and Moringa ovalifolia in semi-arid environment of central Namibia rangeland. This part of Namibia has both arid and semi-arid cli-mates. These climates require the growing of drought-resistant fodder trees to aid in the provision of animal feed or supplement. This is paramount to live-stock farmers who are striving to meet the feed demand of their animals es-pecially during winter and drought periods. It is upon this background that both Moringa species were grown to evaluate their field growth perform-ances. Moringa oleifera grew faster with 224.9 cm and 281.45 cm heights than Moringa ovalifolia that had 77.025 cm and 113.2 cm heights in 2014/2015 summer season (October 2014 to April 2015) and 2015/2016 summer season (October 2015 to April 2016), respectively, although Moringa ovalifolia is na-tive to Namibia. In Namibia, summer usually starts October and ends April the follow year after which winter follows. Moringa oleifera grew significantly higher (P < 0.05) in heights compared to Moringa ovalifolia, though they be-long to the Moringaceae family and were grown under the parallel condi-tions. Therefore, Moringa oleifera would serve as a better alternative for im-proving rangelands’ productivity under these adverse climatic and environ-mental conditions since it can grow faster than Moringa ovalifolia, whose characteristic leads to the rapid establishment of trees and large quantity of leaf-biomass production. Keywords: Folder, Drought-Tolerant Trees, Supplement, Winter.

Publication Title:

Agricultural Sciences

Volume:
10
Pages:
131-141
Item Type:
Journal Article
Language:
en