A study of the effects of storage methods on the quality of maize and household food security in Rungwe District, Tanzania.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A sample of 260 farm households that were randomly selected in Katumba ward, Rungwe district, Tanzania were studied for the effects of storage methods on the quality of maize grain and household food security using qualitative and quantitative methods.Maize storage problems, amounts of maize that farm households harvested and amounts of maize that farm households lost to pests per year, food security status and farm households' perceptions concerning their food security status were investigated using face -to -face semi -structured and structured interviews.Common storage methods that farm households used to store maize and the dietary importance of maize were investigated through interviews, seasonal calendars and the matrix for scoring and ranking.The quality of maize was investigated through conducting mycological analysis and through investigating levels of insect infestation using the incubation method on maize samples collected from a sub-sample of 130 farm households at harvest and after five months of storage period.It was found that farm households in Katumba ward preferred maize meal rather than other types of food that provide bulk such as rice and green bananas/plantains.Maize contributed 66.8 % -69.5 % of the total energy and 83 -90 % of the total protein required per day, and farm households stored maize using roof and sack storage methods.It was also found that 34.5 % of 2323 tonnes of maize that were harvested per annum in Katumba ward were lost to pests during storage.Fusarium, Diplodia, Aspergillus and Penicilliums species were identified as the main fungal pathogens that attacked stored maize.Sitophilus zeamais, Sitotroga cerealella and rodents were also identified as the main maize storage pests.About 25 % of the maize samples that were collected at harvest and 93 % of the maize samples that were collected from the same farm households after five months of storage were infested by either Sitophilus zeamais or Sitotroga cerealella or both.Maize samples from the two storage systems had an average number of 80 insect pests per 120 maize kernels (or 51 g of maize), amounting to 1569 insects per kg.The high levels of insect infestation reduced the amount of maize that could have been available to the farm households and subjected stored maize to fungal infections and subsequent contaminations, thus, rendering the farm households vulnerable to food insecurity.Furthermore, it was also found that most of the infestation of maize by insect pests and moulds in Katumba ward occurred during storage, and that farm households were not well informed concerning maize storage and I am sincerely grateful to my supervisory team, Professor, P. Tongoona, Dr. John Derera, Dr. Maxwell Mudhara and Dr. Augustine Langyintuo for their tireless guidance and support.I am also grateful for Dr. Sackey Yobo's guidance throughout all of the laboratory work.I would also like to thank the Discipline of Plant Pathology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, for making it possible for me to use the laboratory facilities and the Electronic microscopy team for tirelessly helping with taking necessary pictures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".