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Progress and Activities

• Mustapha Ceesay, who is currently acting Director of Research and Head of the NERICA Project at the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) of the Gambia, received Cornell Ph.D. degree in crop and soil sciences, undertaking demonstration trials on SRI at Sapu in The Gambia. SRI results ranged from 5.4 to 8.3 t/ha, depending on variety and spacing. This compares with usual rice yields of 2 t/ha (see 2006 article in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability and related 2003 paper presented at the Northeastern Branch of the American Society of Agronomy meeting, Burlington, VT.)

• In 2002, ten Gambian farmers who had observed the Sapu trials tried SRI methods on their own farms, dividing a field in two portions, to practice SRI on one half and conventional rice growing on the other. The average SRI yield was 7.4 t/ha (see paper from the Sanya proceedings) compared with 2.5 t/ha on the other half, where the only difference was crop management, not farms or farmers. We have no current information on what has been happening with SRI in The Gambia.

Websites and Articles

• Ceesay, Mustapha C., William S. Reid, Erick C.M. Fernandes and Norman T. Uphoff. 2006. The effects of repeated soil wetting and drying on lowland rice yield with System of Rice Intensification (SRI) methods. Int. Jnl. of Agric. Sustainability Vol. 4(1):5–14.
• Experiments with the System of Rice Intensification in the GAMBIA, a presentation by Mustapha Ceesay, National Agricultural Research Institute and Cornell University, at the International Conference "Assessments of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI)", Sanya, China, April 1-4, 2002
• System of Rice Intensification in The Gambia, a web module by Mustapha Ceesay, National Agricultural Research Institute and Cornell University, constructed for the Worldwide Portal to Information on Soil Health