By Joshua Kato
Value chain actors of the input supply category comprise Government, private sector, individual farmers and farmer groups. Government maintains and manages citrus mother gardens used for multiplication of planting materials.
Besides, individual farmers and farmer groups multiply seedlings, gardens, using grafting and budding technologies. Overall, seedling producers find budding technology more economical and easier to use so, majority of the households establish orchards using budded plantlets.
Production.
Smallholders constitute over 95% of producers of citrus. Majority of citrus farming households are male headed. On average, land allocated to citrus farming ranged from 0.04 to 2.4 hectares per household; with an overall average of 0.4 ha. In general, oranges dominate over other components within the citrus sub-sector.
Orchard weeding on average was done 3 times a year by slashing, hoeing and/or ploughing using ox-ploughs. Hoeing, ploughing and slashing techniques are exclusively used the households; while a combination of hoeing and ploughing is used by some households. Ploughing under trees often resulted in damage to roots; implying that the weed management technologies can affect output levels. Most of the labour used for orchard management is family sourced.
