Scaling Up of Termite Mounds Driller Technology in Selected Weredas of Kellam and West Wollega Zones of Oromia State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Termites are small, pale soft bodied insect (order Isopteran) that lives in large colonies with several different castes, typically within a mound of cemented earth. Termites cause widespread damage to a great variety of crops in tropical Africa, are abundant and widely distributed throughout the regions of Ethiopia and pose threat to crops, forestry trees, range land, and domestic houses. So, for the termite situation to be adequately and summarily tackled there is a need to develop participatory involvement of farmers in all stages of technology generation, evaluation, and transfer. For this reason, very simple instrument called termite mound driller was developed and evaluated at Bako Agricultural Research Center on station and it showed effectiveness to minimize termite’s damage to crops and natural vegetation’s. a scaling up of termite mounds driller technology was conducted for three consecutive years  in  2013/14, 2014/15 and 2015/16 during occurrence seasons in selected Woredas of Kellem and West wollega zones of Oromia regional state, Ethiopia. The objective of the study was to reduce termite colonies through scaling up of termite mound driller device which makes easier chemical application under/on the farmers’ field in West and Kellam wollega Zones where termite is a problem on maize , to promote the use of technologies among farmers and improve their income level ,to create awareness of how to develop and transfer these technologies to the resource poor farmers of the area and  also to strengthen linkage between farmers and concerned stakeholders to make this device easily accessible to resource poor farmers. A 360 mounds were poisoned in 253 farmers field in full span of the project span. Among the mounds poisoned only six mounds were regenerated a year later after its application. To poison the specified amount of termite mounds (360), 45 liters of chemicals were used in the three years duration of the project; a rate of 70 milliliter of chemical  and 20 liter of water in combined form was applied to poison a single termite mound. Hence, Farmers are very satisfied with technology and the achievements provided. They evaluate the technology in relation to its effectiveness, time and energy saver, urgent interventions and participatory.

Keywords: Termite Mound Driller, and Diazinon (Ethiozinon)