I am back in the field this week continuing to collect leaves and count the number of mites. I cannot get over how quickly the cassava grew. Two weeks ago during the first round of sampling the crops were the height of my knee and now they are the height of my shoulders. I’m 169 cm tall so that at should give you an idea of how tall they have grown and my filed supervisor tells me that they will get even taller, I will get some photos this week and upload them here.
As well as collecting the leaves I am now testing for soil moisture at every site to see if there is a difference in the soil moisture levels between mono-crop and inter crop fields. This is done using the the EXTECH soil moisture meter a video explaining how to use this device is available here. Along with testing the soil moisture levels I am also testing the soil permeability in each field. This is done using a double ring soil infiltration test and a video explaining how this is done is available here .
It will be interesting to see if there is a difference in the soil between the cassava mono-crop fields and the cassava cowpea inter-cropped fields.