A report for industrial training carried out at Bulumbi sub-County in Busia district.

Abstract

During my industrial training, I was given an opportunity to undertake internship on product department in Bulumbi Sub County in Busia district for ten weeks and I was under the supervision of Mr. Oguttu Ivan, the Agricultural Officer, Bulumbi Sub County, Busia District from the first day to the last day of my internship.

We moved from village to village within the sub county following up the beneficiaries’ gardens to see how they were performing and giving them the technical advice whenever needed most of the-beneficiaries were dealing in coffee, cassava, passion fruits and bananas.

The villages included Buhobe, Butongi, Bushahuba, Bukabi etc.

Coffee black twig borer was the pest majorly disturbing farmers i.e., making the coffee twigs to dry. We advised the coffee farmers to be scouting in their gardens while removing the dried twigs, collect them in an open place and then burn them to minimize the coffee borers movement from one plant to another. We further recommended the farmers to spray their coffee with imidacloprid. We trained farmers in field management practices, pre- and post-harvest handling in their crop enterprises i.e., we would target thirty farmers in each place trained them how to use push pull technology to control maize stalk borer, trained the said beneficiaries in crop husbandry practices.

We further showed farmers how to construct kitchen gardens to boost their nutrition by supplying families with vegetables. Then we also trained the beneficiaries in seed and field management. Cassava in different villages was disturbed by cassava mosaic and cassava streak virus. We taught farmers how to identify these cassava common diseases by differentiating the signs of the two diseases.

We went ahead to tell farmers to control white flies, plant resistant variants and rogue infected cassava plants. Most banana plantations were affected by nematodes and we advised farmers to use furadan.