Common beans are one of the most important food and cash crops for most Malawians. The insufficient production of the crop in the country coupled with low yields has made scientists give much interest to the crop so that they can address the constraints to the productivity problems. In this regard, breeders have been engaged in the development and release of improved varieties of common beans which in most cases are disease resistant, high yielding, drought resistant, and fast cooking. Therefore it is the interest of this study to find the reasons why productivity of the crop is still low despite the release of the improved varieties. The study adopted contingent valuation (CV), a method frequently used to assess willingnessto- pay of people for non-market goods or services and this was applied to assess farmer’s willingness-to-pay for the new improved bean seed varieties which are high yielding. Double bounded dichotomous choice with an open ended follow-up format was used to obtain the household’s willingness-to-pay. In addition; the study reviewed the existing dissemination channels of bean seed to make recommendations with regard to seed supply. Descriptive statistics from the 132 households interviewed shows that the structural constraints to seed acquisition are compounded by farmers’ poverty. Otherwise, most farmers are aware of the existence of improved varieties of common bean seed and perceive that with the use of this seed, productivity can improve hence willing to pay for the good. The study is 95% confident that mean price farmers are willing to pay for improved common bean seed is between MK 527.78 and MK 591.92. Three major existing informal dissemination channels of bean seed were discovered in the study areas. Therefore there is a need for government to work in collaboration with NGOs towards ensuring a formal supply system of bean seed characterised by vertically organised production and dissemination of tested and approved seed varieties, and using strict quality control rules, so that farmers can be assured of accessing improved seed varieties. This will increase the nation’s food security. / Dissertation (MSc Agric)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / unrestricted

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1986 X8 / Master of Science / Horticulture, Forestry, and Recreation Resources

Apesar de ser um experimento bem conhecido na literatura relacionada ao estudo da informação quântica, o Oscilador Paramétrico Ótico (OPO) operando acima do limiar não forneceu sempre os resultados esperados por sua teoria, pois apresentava excesso de ruído na fase de seus feixes, de origem desconhecida. Neste trabalho apresentamos de forma sistemática a teoria padrão do Oscilador Paramétrico Ótico no contexto quântico. Além disso, introduzimos um modelo ad-hoc para o excesso de ruído de fase do OPO que reproduz os resultados obtidos em nossos experimentos. Em nosso modelo, inserimos um ruído na fase de cada feixe do OPO proporcional a intensidade dos campos intracavidade. Este ruído apresenta correlações não perfeitas entre os feixes, como foi demonstrado experimentalmente. Apesar de desconhecidas a origem desse excesso de ruído, temos indicações de que ele é causado por centros expalhadores de luz no cristal do OPO devido a presença de fônons de origem térmica. / In spite of the fact that the Optical Parametric Oscillator (OPO) is one of the most known experiments related with quantum information research, its experimental results did not have a good agreement with the theory, in the above threshold regime, because of an unexpected excess noise in the phase quadrature on its beams. In this work we sistematicaly present the quantum theory of OPO. Moreover, we introduce an ad-hoc model for the excess noise in the phase quadrature in the OPO that reproduces our experimental data. In our model, the excess noise in the phase quadrature is proportional of the intensity of each OPO beam. This noise presents non-perfect correlations among the fields, as is experimentaly observed. Despite of the unknown origin of this excess noise, we have some indications that it is caused by scattering centers produced by fonons of thermal origin.