Additional Information About Crops

Lohutok, Sudan

I went to the mountain garden, Ahaba, this morning.  There are still very few weeds and little weeding has been done.  Low weed pressure is apparently one advantage in the first year after clearing trees in the mountains.  Some of the tall sorghum is heading.  Some of the maize (corn) is tasseling and looks very good.  Much of it has two ears per stalk though the ears are quite a bit smaller than we would expect in the United States.

  

My house is off to a good start at its new site.  Lanny decided it would be better if it were closer to the other houses, so we moved its location.  Samuel is putting tin on his roof today.

Photos: Construction on my house begins.

  

I talked with Tobia today.  I got the names of more types of sorghum and groundnuts.  I added them to my entry of Tuesday, 8 July 1980.  I will repeat the new information here also.

  

Red Sorghums:

Akunati - Tall, red, goose-necked.

Obilet - Tall, red.

  

Groundnuts (peanuts):  

Atuye - Bush type.

Elonge - Bush type. Very big brown nuts. Must be dug to harvest.

Logum - Bush type.  Like atuye, but big nuts.

Aheto - Bush type.  White nuts.  Many nuts in each shell.

Amakarara - Big shell like kabir.  Bush type.  Must be dug to harvest.

  

Maize (corn):

Etuyet - A type of oseri which is short and has one-ear.

  

Refer to the Tuesday, 8 July 1980 entry for a more complete list of crop varieties.

  

Tobia said some groundnuts must be dug with hoes while others can just be pulled.  The types which must be dug are elonge, amakarara, kabir and aful.  Tobia planted aful and atuye this year.  He had no seed for amilo as his was destroyed by the sun last year.  Amilo is planted about 2 weeks after other groundnuts.  The things he said about it seemed to indicate that it is less drought tolerant or else photoperiod sensitive.

One would expect that with so much variation to work with, crop breeding programs would have a good chance of success with sorghum and with groundnuts.