IDENTIFICATION OF OPTIMUM TILLAGE TIME IN KAFANCHAN AREA OF KADUNA STATE NIGERIA USING REMOTELY SENSED DATA

Abstract

Tillage has been identified as the single most expensive operation in crop production. Major causes of this are the amount of energy expended to overcome adverse soil conditions. These conditions exist because of wrong or inappropriate timing of the operation. Farmers in Kafanchan area have been observed to spend a great deal of resources during tillage for lack of knowledge the optimum time for the operation. The purpose of this work therefore, was to identify the optimum time for tillage operation in Kafanchan. The Thornthwaite and Mather model was used to compute the monthly potential evapotranspiration (PET) for Kafanchan from data gathered remotely in order to compute the climatic water balance. Results observed revealed that the area had water deficit in the months of January (0.00mm) to mid-May (484.09mm) and October to December (0.00mm). Water surplus was observed from May and ends mid-October. From the developed graphical model, it was concluded that the optimum tillage time in Kafanchan should be from the second week of May and should stop in the first week of June.