Exceptional results from biochar experiment in Cameroon

Posted in News, Biochar, Project, Science

Biochar Fund has reported extremely encouraging first results from its field trials in South West Cameroon. Working with small groups of subsistence farmers around the town of Kumba, the Fund set up and managed a large-scale experiment to assess whether maize (corn) yields were improved by the addition of biochar to the soil. The biochar was made from local agricultural wastes and tree thinnings. The data from the trials strongly suggests that biochar adds greatly to food production. Some areas showed yield improvements of more than 250% over the control plots. The areas dosed with biochar also showed substantially increased production of crop biomass, including roots, stalks, and leaves.

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Comments (1)

Bihibindi

24 May 2012 at 16:05 | #

Looks like fun and some really great pix! Is this a puaolpr climb (i.e. are there many organized trips with guides, porters etc)? How long did entire climb take you and how many were in your team? I hear you about the porters being unsung heroes. I recently climbed Kilimanjaro and was really put to shame (as were the rest of my co-climbers) by our team of porters that stripped down camp daily and raced past us up the mountainside at "porter speed" to set up camp in new, higher location while we struggled slowly up. We would frequently get to camp, utterly spent to find them sitting around, chatting and sometimes smoking! I'm trying to figure out how to add photos and will attach some to my next post.

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