Research on Crop Water Use and Drought Responses in East Africa

Abstract

Until the early 50’s, the main effort in agricultural production and hence agricultural research in East Africa was devoted to industrial crops like coffee, tea, cotton and sisal. Tea presented no problems being grown on the fertile well-watered highlands. Most coffee estates were also located in areas of sufficient rainfall and similarly the low land areas with high convective rainfall proved appropriate for cotton. For those expatriate farmers who could not get into the highlands, sisal proved well adapted to the drier savannah regions. For these individual crops, therefore, the major limiting factors were diseases and maintenance of soil fertility.