Under 4CE-MED project, on-farm demonstration trial of Camelina under conservation agriculture (CA) was planted at Oued Ghilane village near Settat, Morocco. A field event was organized for farmers on May 6, 2022. Twelve farmers and a student participated in the event. Office National du Conseil Agricole (ONCA) representative was met individually, informed the details about the event.
For planting Camelina, the locally available seed drill usually used for planting cereals was used by the farmer (Mr. Mohamed Choukri). For comparison, cereal crops namely barley and wheat were planted by the farmers in the adjoining fields. The planted area under CA/no-till condition was 1 ha.
Two solutions/good practices were implemented:
(1) Conservation agriculture/no-till system along with crop rotation with crops like Camelina in cereal-based cropping system was implemented.
(2) Showed/demonstrated planting equipment’s used for CA/no-till system and for harvesting.
The visual observation suggested that Camelina under CA performed well compared to cereals under severe drought condition that Morocco experience during 2021-22 cropping season.
Adapting CA could improve soil water conservation, soil fertility and health; reduce cost of cultivation by use of less fuel, reduced use of synthetic fertilizer, and reduce risk of crop loss (since Camelina matures early) than conventional tillage and continuous cropping cereal cropping.
The progress of implementation was over 90%, even though the season was experience unprecedented drought since 1980 in Morocco.
Photo credit ICARDA
Photo credit ICARDA
Photo credit ICARDA
Photo credit ICARDA