Rainfall Variability and its Effects on Maize Production in Northern Nigeria

Abstract

Rainfall pattern has always been one of the major responsible factor for the performance of crops within the tropics and the failure of some major agriculture development schemes points to the urgent need for studying the variability of precipitation effectiveness as it affects agricultural production. Daily rainfall data and other rainfall related parameters and maize yield for ten (10) years were used for this study. These data covers twelve (12) stations in the northern part of Nigeria. These data were subjected to agro metrological and statistical analysis. Correlation analysis reveals that out of eight observed and derived paramters, onset dates of rain (0.62), cessation dates (0.61), length of rainy season (0.85) and rainfall amount during the growing season (0.62) have significant relationship with maize yield. Simple regression analysis reveals that precipitation effectiveness accounted for 65.8% of the variation in the yield of maize in the region. The implication of these statistical findings was that the spread of the rainy season is one of the most contributing factors to high yield of maize in the region under consideration, also the time the rain starts (onset) and stops (cessation) also play a significant role in what the yield will look like in any maize farm