Nigerian Institute For Oil Palm Reasearch

Storage Area Networks (SANs) are critical in enterprise IT infrastructure, offering high-throughput and low-latency storage solutions. However, traditional SAN architectures that rely on kernel-space multipathing software face significant challenges in virtualized environments, where extended IO paths and high context-switching overheads degrade performance. While the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) has emerged as a powerful tool to enhance IO efficiency by enabling userspace drivers, it introduces limitations in multipathing capabilities.To address these challenges, we have developed SUMF (SPDK Userspace IO Multipathing Framework), an innovative userspace IO multipathing software. SUMF leverages SPDK’s strengths while overcoming its limitations by directly managing multiple IO paths within virtualized cloud computing environments. This solution reduces IO latency by avoiding unnecessary user-kernel transitions and optimizes the system through improved IO path aggregation and selection, dynamic load balancing, and robust failover and failback mechanisms. Our experiments demonstrate that, compared to native SPDK, SUMF achieves higher throughput and shows stronger adaptability to path failures and bandwidth imbalances during transmission.

The Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) Palmetum has faced significant challenges, leading to a decline in its ornamental palm species collection. This study presents the first comprehensive checklist of existing ornamental palms, highlighting their health, economic importance and conservation status. Using standard procedures, 231 trees from 22 genera and 26 species of Arecaceae were identified and documented, including their botanical and common names, and native range. Phoenix L. showed the highest diversity with 3 species, followed by Elaeis Jacq. and Hyphaene Gaertn., with 2 species each. The study revealed that 76% of the trees are non-native but have adapted to the region. However, tree health assessment revealed issues like leaf defoliation, galls, stem rots and epiphyte growth, indicating neglect. Beyond their ornamental value, most palms have economic importance as food, feed, fuel and medicine. Given the rapid genetic depletion, urgent conservation measures are needed to prevent biodiversity loss. This checklist will facilitate future palm introductions, ex-situ conservation and systematic reproduction of existing species, ensuring the long-term preservation of ornamental palm collection in the Palmetum.

The design and evaluation of a small scale processing charcoal kiln was done in order to improve the existing practices employed by many local people in the carbonization of different Agricultural biomass (oil palm kernel shells, Coconut shells, Date palm stalk,Shea tree stalk and wood) to obtain charcoal. Charcoal making is the transformation of biomass through the process of slow pyrolysis. The process takes place in four main stages governed by the temperature required in each stage. The charcoal kiln is made from a cylindrical mild steel of 5mm plate thickness and it has five components which are the chimney, heat chamber, cover, burning chamber and the seal. The charcoal kiln was successfully used for the carbonization of the biomass of oil palm kernel shells and coconut shells. The time required, quantity of the biomass and temperature where factors taken into consideration during the carbonization process. At 90mins, 10kg of oil palm kernel shells totally carbonized at 629°C and yielded 2.738kg of charcoal. At 60mins, 10kg of Coconut shells totally carbonized at 656°C and yielded 1.768kg.

With the development of cross-datacenter services, accurate and low-cost network performance measurement enables better traffic scheduling. However, the existing network measurement suffers from a lack of telemetry granularities and excessive costs. Besides, the implementation of INT in the WAN remains undefined. In this work, We propose WAN-INT, a two-phase path orchestration algorithm designed to address the challenges posed by limited communication resources and varying link states in WAN scenarios. By generating a telemetry policy based on this algorithm, it can effectively adapt to the requirements of various applications and network states, achieving a balance between telemetry quality and cost limitations. We conduct experiments in a commercial WAN environment. Results show that WAN-INT outperforms existing schemes and reaches a good compromise between the telemetry quality and cost constraints. Compared with the state-of-the-art telemetry system, WAN-INT effectively reduces by at least 43% of telemetry cost while ensuring telemetry quality.

Agricultural performance of biochar blend prepared from waste on the properties of soil supporting the oil palm was investigated. The biochar from the waste produced from coconut coir and chicken dung at 300oC for three hours were characterized in terms of pH, attrition, porosity, bulk density, ash content, conductivity, surface charge, nutrient value, yield% and surface area. Soil samples collected at the Nigeria Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) main station were prepared and analyzed for physico-chemical properties in the laboratory using standard techniques. The physico-chemical properties of the biochar blend –soil mixture samples in which sprouted oil palm seedlets have been planted were measured as a function of biochar blend and loading and compared with the values obtained in the control without biochar. The biochar blend showed significant (p<0.05) improvement in soil properties and growth of the oil palm seedlets.

Several economically important diseases of forest trees and agricultural crops in many parts of the world have been linked to the ascomycete fungal pathogen Thielaviopsis paradoxa. This study compared the growth rate of 41 isolates of T. paradoxa sourced from different hosts and two countries (Nigeria and Papua New Guinea (PNG)) under six temperature levels (22 °C, 25 °C, 30 °C, 32 °C, 34 °C and 35 °C). Phylogenetic relationships were obtained from the analysis of their nuclear ribosomal DNA internal transcribed sequence (ITS) data. While all the isolates from PNG and few from Nigeria grew optimally between 22 °C and 32 °C, the majority had their highest growth rate (2.9 cm/day) between 25 °C and 32 °C. Growth performances were generally low between 34 °C and 35 °C; no isolate from the sugar cane grew at these high temperatures. The oil palm isolate DA029 was the most resilient, with the highest growth rate (0.97 cm/day) at 35 °C. Phylogenetic analysis delineated five clusters: a very large clade which accommodates the majority (30 Nigerian and 3 PNG oil palm isolates) and four small clades containing two members each. To a large extent, the clustering pattern failed to address the temperature-isolate relationship observed. However, only the four small clades represent isolates with similar temperature tolerances. It is most likely that wider and robust analyses with more diverse isolates and genetic markers will provide better insight on thermal resilience of T. paradoxa. Additionally, future research to establish relationships between vegetative growth at different temperatures and of different pathogenicity and disease epidemiology merits being explored. The results might provide useful information for the formulation of effective management and control strategies against the pathogen, especially in this era of climate change.

Background and Objective: Arthropods are important members of the soil ecosystem and help in the pollination of crops thereby increasing yield.Consequently, soil arthropodsʼ diversity was investigated to determine if arthropodsʼ diversity was related to environmental factors such as soil temperature, soil moisture and land use.Materials and Methods: Soils from three different land use were sampled with a soil auger and sub-sampled for arthropodsʼ extraction using the Berlese-Tullgren funnel extraction method for soil arthropods.After sorting, the different order of arthropods as well as soils physical and chemical properties including climatic variables were analysed for One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) using Genstat statistical software.The soils were also used to raise oil palm seedlings.The correlation between soil arthropods and climatic variables was done using SPSS version 21.Results: The land use types influenced soil arthropodsʼ diversity.Coleoptera and insect larva were the most abundant and were higher in POME-impacted soil than the other land use types.Mean Coleoptera and insect larva in POME-impacted soil were 30.67±5.9 a and 76.33±33.1 b , respectively.Many of the soil arthropods correlated positively and significantly with one another.The soil arthropods also correlated positively with soil moisture content.Conclusion: There was a relationship between the soil arthropods and environmental factors measured across the three land use and that it was land use rather than arthropods diversity that influenced the growth of oil palm nursery seedlings.

This study assessed the activities of GIZ (German International Corporation) intervention technology on shea nut processors in Niger State, Nigeria. A two-stage sampling technique was adopted for the study. The first stage involved a purposive selection of 15 Local Government Areas of GIZ’s intervention. The second stage involved a proportionate random selection of 297 beneficiaries constituting 10% processors in the GIZ profile list. Also, in the same LGAs, snow-balling technique was used to randomly select 297 Shea nut processors that were GIZ non-beneficiaries, thereby making a total sample size of 594. Data were collected through interview schedule and were analysed using percentages and mean and multiple regression analysis. The study revealed that majority (75.1 %) of the respondents had non-formal education, 76.6 % were between 41-60 years with mean age of 48.1 years. All the respondents (100.0 %) were female and married with average of experience of 15.5 years. The most severe constraints were; inadequate funding (=1.875), poor market channels (=1.737) and inadequate extension contact (=1.542), and there was positive relationship between some selected socio-economic characteristics and the level of adoption of GIZ’s technologies (F=23.59, p <0.001). The results from this study showed that the processors were constrained by inadequate fund, poor market channels and inadequate extension services because the gap from the existing one is lower before the intervention of GIZ Shea nut technology due to high quality of production of premium shea butter produced by the beneficiaries which attracted income. The continuity of the GIZ’s intervention with effective extension services and provision of credit facilities to ameliorate the problem of inadequate fund is highly recommended.

The study examined the awareness level of poultry farmers on biosafety practices on infectious diseases in Kano state, Nigeria. A two-stage sampling procedure was used in selecting 166 respondents through the use of questionnaire. The data were analysed using mean, percentages, and standard deviation. The result showed that the main sources of awareness of biosafety practices were mass media (48.8%), family/friends/neighbours (25.9%) and poultry farmers’ association (PAN) (11.4%). Awareness of biosafety were in the following component cleaning (low pressure washer ( x̄ =1.602) and hand washing after toileting (x̄ =1.789), disinfection covering feeds in the store (x̄ =1.560), manure management (x̄ =1 .608) and removal of dead carcasses (x̄ =1.530). component. At segregation and traffic control all the subcomponents were known except; banning keeping of birds at home (x̄ =1.114), exclusion of rodents & wild birds (x̄ =1.054) and presence of buffer areas around the farm (x̄=1.000). The Majority of the respondents claimed very low levels of awareness of biosafety practices (81.9%), major constraints to biosafety practices among the clienteles were; complexity of the biosecurity, inadequate capital (93.4%) and high cost of the biosafety practices (83.1%). Awareness level of the respondents should be improved upon through sensitization and provision of more extension services in addition to the mass media effort.