Report for Kasinthula Research Station Internship

by

Winnie Mponela

(170100046)

INTERNSHIP REPORT

Submitted to the Faculty of Agriculture in Partial Fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of Science in Irrigation Engineering

Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR)

Bunda College, Lilongwe, Malawi

October, 2023
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
All thanks to God for the gift of life, his mercy and grace upon me. I would like to thank
LUANAR Agricultural Engineering Department for the opportunity given to participate in this
internship program, which helped me to strengthen my theoretical knowledge I acquired during
course work.

I would like to thank the Kasinthula Research station Team for allowing me to do my internship
and gain practical hands-on knowledge, I would also extend my gratitude to my family for the
whole support during the internship period. I couldn’t have done it without you, thank you.

ii
 LIST OF ACRONYMS
DARS : department of agricultural research station.

KARS : Kasinthula agricultural research station

WFD : wetting front detector.

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 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Internship Report at Kasinthula Research Station

by

Winnie Mponela, BSc IRE

Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR), Bunda College.

In the partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Irrigation
Engineering students are supposed to attend internship program for a period of sixteen weeks in
which the last two weeks are devoted into report writing and presentations. The main purpose is
to produce graduates who are equipped with both theoretical and practical knowledge. The
internship took place at Kasinthula research station situated in Chikwawa district. The research
as 89 hectares of land of which 40 hectares is being utilized for irrigation and non-irrigation
trials, 13 hectares is occupied by fisheries and the other hectares are under development. The
station conducts many of the irrigation trials as it is the only station that is mainly used for
irrigation trials in Malawi. Some of the trials at Kasinthula include water budget trial, onion trial,
water melon trial, rice trials. The station also conducts irrigation tools trail like chameleon and
full stop wetting front detector, and is also responsible for irrigation projects like solar system
installation, rehabilitation of irrigation schemes and uses sprinkler, drip and surface irrigation
methods. Overall, the internship program has been very successful as most of the internship
objectives were achieved.

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TABLE OF CONTENT

Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT...............................................................................................................ii

LIST OF ACRONYMS..................................................................................................................iii

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY..........................................................................................................iv

LIST OF FIGURES.....................................................................................................................vii

1.0 INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................1

2.0 OBJECTIVES.....................................................................................................................3

INTERNSHIP DESCRIPTION....................................................................................................4

HORTICULTURAL SECTION................................................................................................4

2.1.1 ONION TRIAL..............................................................................................................4

2.1.2 WATER MELON TRIAL.............................................................................................4

2.1.3 MANGO PRODUCTION.............................................................................................4

2.1.4 BANANA PRODUCTION............................................................................................5

IRRIGATION SECTION..........................................................................................................6

CHAMELEON SENSOR INSTALLATION.......................................................................6

2.2.2. FIELD IRRIGATION..................................................................................................8

BANANA TRIAL DATA COLLECTION............................................................................9

SPRINKLER IRRIGATION EXERCISE.........................................................................10

DRIP IRRIGATION.............................................................................................................11

LEARNING OUTCOMES.........................................................................................................13

4.1 THE INSTALLATION OF IRRIGATION TOOLS.......................................................13

4.2 BUILDING OF PROFESSIONAL RELATIONS AND OPEN MINDEDNESS..........13

4.3 APPLYING CLASSROOM KNOWLEDGE ON THE GROUND...............................13

LEARNT NEW SKILLS.........................................................................................................13

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 4.5 INTERACTION WITH FARMERS................................................................................13

5.0 CHALLENGES FACED.......................................................................................................14

5.1 HOT WEATHER CONDITIONS.....................................................................................14

5.2 TRANSPORTATION PROBLEMS.................................................................................14

6.0 RECOMMENDATIONS.......................................................................................................15

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 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 mango grafting exercise....................................................................................................5

Figure 2 banana field.......................................................................................................................6
Figure 3 chameleon sensor and full stop wetting front detector installation at KARS...................7
Figure 4 salt and nutrients level measuring.....................................................................................8
Figure 5 chameleon and full stop WFD at kachere irrigation scheme.............................................8
Figure 6 irrigation in banana trial field............................................................................................9
Figure 7 diverting water into the banana basin..............................................................................10
Figure 8 measuring a banana finger diameter................................................................................11
Figure 9 Recording the measured finger diameters.......................................................................12
Figure 10 setting a sprinkler..........................................................................................................13
Figure 11 drip system layout on cow pea crop..............................................................................14
Figure 12 planting cow pea on a drip system field........................................................................14

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 1.0 INTRODUCTION
The industrial internship programme IS a requirement for all irrigation and agricultural
engineering fifth year student of Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources
(LUANAR) enrolled under the department of Agricultural Engineering. It is a credited course
programme which was introduced with the aim of equipping engineering students with hands on
experience in various engineering fields and enable the students to explore career paths and
goals.

Kasinthula was initially established as a pilot project following a recommendation from

Lockwood Irrigation Feasibility Study in 1968; when a research component was attached to the
project, which was limited to rice research on 20 ha piece of land. It was run by Malawi
Development Corporation (MDC) as commercial farm and was later handed over to Shire Valley
Agricultural Development Project (SVADP) in 1973. At that time, a research component was
initiated.

In 1975, the Research Department of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) took over research
activities from SVADP. The research component was renamed Kasinthula Agricultural Research
Station (KARS) after being taken over by the Department of Agricultural Research (DAR) In
1979.Kasinthula Agricultural Research Station provides one of the most enabling environments
for conducting irrigation and agro-ecology research. It has sufficient land area for conducting
field experiments and laboratories for soil and plant analyses. The water is pumped from the
Shire River, 1 km away from the field into the canals from where it moves by gravity to the
fields. Drained water is led back into Shire River through open drains via Mthumba stream and
the flood band protects the terraces from being washed away.

recent years a water reservoir was constructed which is being used to store water for sprinkler
irrigation on a 5ha land. A solar system was also installed for surface irrigation,

Kasinthula Agricultural Research Station is located 7 km South East of Chikwawa District

Headquarters and 59 km away from Blantyre City along the Blantyre - Nsanje Road. It lies
between latitude 16o0’ S, and longitude 34o 5’E in the floor of the Great Rift Valley at 70 m
altitude. occupies a total land area of 89 ha of which both irrigated and non-irrigated trials

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occupy about 40 ha (C1A – C5A), 21 ha underdeveloped (C7B – C8), while Fishponds for
Fisheries Department occupy 13 ha.

Temperature is generally very high at Kasinthula with an average mean maximum monthly
temperature of above 30oC and mean minimum monthly temperature of 20 ℃. In summer
maximum temperatures are even much higher, reaching as high as above 40 ℃. In winter
maximum temperature range from 24 - 27 ℃. while the minimum rarely goes below 10 ℃.

KARS has four sections, irrigation section, horticultural section, cereal section, legumes section
and farm section.

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 2.0 OBJECTIVES
Internship objectives:

i. Apply classroom learning and theory to industries;

ii. Explore carrier paths and develop professional goals;
iii. Enhance the students’ resume and employability potential;
iv. Develop self-confidence and positive work experiences;
v. Observe industry professionals and benefit from their expertise;
vi. Widen the student’s range of industry contacts and professional workers;
vii. Contribute ideas and receive feedback from industry leaders;
viii. Gain unique cultural and corporate learning experience.

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 INTERNSHIP DESCRIPTION
This section contains all the activities done at KARS, which were done at horticultural section
and irrigation section. The first four weeks of the internship were done at horticultural and the
other weeks at irrigation section.

HORTICULTURAL SECTION
This section covers all the trials that concern horticultural crops like onion, tomatoes, water
melon, bananas, mango, others. The weeks spent at this section; the activities done were.

2.1.1 ONION TRIAL.

The trial was done to find out which of the seven varieties of onion can do better in lower shire
areas like Chikwawa. The nursery bed was made and the seven varieties were planted living a
space of 10 centimeters between each variety. The nursery was mulched using grass and it was
irrigated until two weeks before the actual planting in the beds, the irrigation frequency was
reduced, so that the onion can develop resistance to water stress and have qualities to do better
on the bed field. After six weeks the seedlings were ready for transplanting, they were
transplanted at a spacing of 10 by 10 on a well leveled field beds, the seven varieties were
allocated on the beds using the RSD. There were three replicates, each having 14 beds. After one
week the fertilizer was applied. The week after fertilizer application, the field there was weeding
of the field, the field was irrigated twice a week using flooding surface irrigation.

2.1.2 WATER MELON TRIAL

Water melon trial was on at horticultural section to see which variety will mature faster, which
variety is very sweet. There were 4 varieties, to come up with which variety matures fast,
flowering data was collected of the variety with 50% flowering percentage. Due to pests this trial
didn’t went as planned as the pests destroyed the whole crop.

2.1.3 MANGO PRODUCTION.

The horticultural section owns a mango orchard, having different types of mango varieties, some
of the varieties are Kent, bollibo, manunga, hadden, sebo, zero, tommy, Kensington, Anderson,
desert apple, all these are hybrid varieties, these mango varieties are grafted, using local varieties
as root stock and the hybrid as seon. The root stock should be as same as the size of a pencil and
the seon should be of the same size as the root stock so that their skins are fitted for food uptake
from the roots to the leaves. The materials needed for grating are, the root stock, seon, grafting

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tape, a knife, the methods of grafting are mainly three, wedge grafting, this type of grafting both
seon and the root stock are cut on one side in a wedge shape and they are joined making sure that
the bark of both stock and seon are joining properly, then the area is sealed using grafting tape.
The other types are the seedlings are then covered with plastics to increase the humidity for
quick healing of the cut area. And the seedlings are put in a shade.

Figure 1 mango grafting exercise

2.1.4 BANANA PRODUCTION.

The banana field at horticultural section was a trial for grand nine and William’s banana varieties
to see which one will do better between the two varieties at lower shire. After the project was
completed the banana field still lives on. the activities done on the banana field were planting the
bananas the suckers that a hole was dug 60 centimeters deep and a diameter of 60 centimeters,
the banana sucker was planted and the soils were mixed with manure and filled the hole and then
irrigated, another activity was applying manure in the banana field, where a line was dug around
the banana matte and the manure was put in the dug line and covered.

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 Figure 2 banana field

IRRIGATION SECTION.
CHAMELEON SENSOR INSTALLATION
These devices were introduced during the VIA project. Is has sensors, one for temperature, three
for moisture detecting, which are put in the soil at different depths depending on the type of crop.
For example, in maize, one is put at 15 centimeters, the second one at 30 centimeters, the other
one at 45 centimeters and the temperature at 10 centimeters. This device is used to detect if a
farmer is supposed to irrigate or not as it has a reader showing colors according to the moisture
status of the soil, when it shows blue it means there is enough moisture, the soils are at field
capacity, when its green it shows the moisture is still available for crop uptake when the it shows
red .it means there is no enough moisture in the soil for crop uptake and the farmer is advised to
irrigate at this level.

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 Figure 3 chameleon sensor and full stop wetting front detector installation at KARS.
The cut off time for irrigation is determined by full stop WFD. The WFD pops up when the
water has filled the soil and the irrigation must stop., it comes in a set of two, one is put a
shallow depth and the other one deeper, the shallow detects if the water has filled the top soil and
the lower one fir the deeper soils, .

The water collected in the WFD is used to measure salts and nitrate levels. The water is sucked
by a syringe then put in a container and the nitrate strip is dipped in the water then is left for a
while to see changes in color changes which determines how much nitrate is available in the soil,
this helps the farmers to keep tract of the use of the nitrate on their farms, if the nitrates are found
within the root zone then the farmer is assured of the crop feeding on the nitrate and monitor it as
it goes and if the nitrate results shows very low nitrate content then the farmer can apply
fertilizer to boost the nutrients in the soil. The collected water is also used to detect salt content
in the water. The depth of the WFD indicates where more salt is. This helps the farmers to know
the level of salts and also decide on what to do if the salts are accumulating around the root zone,
they are advised to lime or over irrigate to reach the salts down.

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 Figure 4 salt and nutrients level measuring
During the internship, we visited some schemes in chiradzulu where we were installing the
irrigation tools and also sensitize the farmers on the importance of using these tools, we also
heard the challenges they were facing and discussed how to resolve them together with the
farmers. We visited kachere irrigation scheme, ngaka irrigation scheme, mpenga irrigation
scheme and mtangatanga irrigation scheme.

Figure 5 chameleon and full stop WFD at kachere irrigation scheme.

2.2.2. FIELD IRRIGATION
KARS has all the three types of irrigation, surface, pressurized and overhead. The banana field is
irrigated using surface irrigation, where the bananas are planted in basins, siphons of 2.71 liters

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are used to get water from the canal into the basins, the first basin to be irrigated is the one with
the WFD, when the WFD pops up the time is recorded and every basin is irrigated using the
recorded time with the same number of siphons.

Figure 6 irrigation in banana trial field

The irrigation section has water budget trial, where there are four frequencies, the first frequency
is irrigated twice a week, the second one once a week, the third frequency was using sensors and
the fourth one was being irrigated once, this trial’s aim is to see how much a farmer can gain in
return after using what irrigation frequency and which one is recommended for farmers at lower
shire areas.

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 Figure 7 diverting water into the banana basin.
BANANA TRIAL DATA COLLECTION.
The trial is about looking into the equal amount of water applied on the field that has different
number of hands on one banana stock. It has five treatments. Treatment one has one hand,
treatment two has two hands, treatment three has three hand, treatment four has four hand and
treatment five has the whole stock, currently there were two replicates three and four, replicate
one and two were already harvested. The data is collected once a week. Where every Friday the
diameter of figures for each treatment is measured and recorded. each trial has five fingers that
are labelled one to five, the banana prices are determined by the finger sizes of the banana stock.

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Figure 8 measuring a banana finger diameter.

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The recorded data is recorded and analyzed to see which treatment is giving more profit and has
good quality in the eyes of the customers,

Figure 9 Recording the measured finger diameters.

SPRINKLER IRRIGATION EXERCISE

Sprinkler irrigation is located at C5, it has a total land of five hectares. It has a reservoir, as of
now only two hectares is being utilized but the system is installed on the whole five hectares. On
this exercise we were oriented on the pumping system, the installation of the system like the pipe
system, we were able to put the sprinklers on the hydrant and set the system running.

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 Figure 10 setting a sprinkler
The KARS team explained the problems they been facing on the farm and asked us to run a
technical evaluation to see what is causing the problems and suggest some solutions, the
proposal was written and presented to the team. The office was gathering materials for the
project.

DRIP IRRIGATION
The drip system was installed at KARS offices behind the laboratory, is a simple system with a
water tank, main line then a distributary lines that lateral lines are attached to, the system faces a
number of challenges like the sprinkler system, the discharge is getting low, and we were asked
to run a technical evaluation on the performance of the drip system and suggest some solutions to
the challenges so far faced.

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 Figure 11 drip system layout on cow pea crop.
We replaced some of the old damaged laterals with new laterals. And we planted cow peas, that
were irrigated twice a week.

Figure 12 planting cow pea on a drip system field.

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 LEARNING OUTCOMES.
There were a lot of lessons from the internship period.
4.1 THE INSTALLATION OF IRRIGATION TOOLS.
We were involved in the installation of the chameleon sensors and full stop WFD at the fields,
going anywhere will be able to install as this hands-on experience has given me skills that can be
used anywhere. The tools were installed in in different types of crops with different root zones
and type of soil.
4.2 BUILDING OF PROFESSIONAL RELATIONS AND OPEN MINDEDNESS.
During the internship period, were able to interact with different people in the of different ranks,
starting from the station manager to the field workers and have learnt a lot from all,
4.3 APPLYING CLASSROOM KNOWLEDGE ON THE GROUND.
The things that we learnt in class are the things we mostly did at KARS, we were able to connect
and apply the class work on the ground. This helped us to appreciate the knowledge we got from
the course work.
LEARNT NEW SKILLS.
We were located at horticultural section the first month, where we learnt to on mango grafting,
banana production, manure application, onion production, nursery treatment, which were new.
4.5 INTERACTION WITH FARMERS.
The field visit to different irrigation schemes in chiradzulu gave us an experience of interacting
with the farmers, how they manage their schemes and fields, this was a great experience as we
learnt how farmers solve their everyday field challenges and how they take new technology.

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 5.0 CHALLENGES FACED
5.1 HOT WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Chikwawa is very hot especially in the month of august to November, and we happened to be
there at that particular time, this affected our field work learning as when the sun is very hot, we
were released as the work could not be done under the hot sun, and we were to do the same work
the following day. A work that can done in one or two days was being done the whole week. To
atleast overcome this, we were going to the field as early at six in the morning.
5.2 TRANSPORTATION PROBLEMS
The station has one vehicle which is used for field work as such we couldn’t travel all of us, we
were eight internees and could fit in one car, so we had to take turns as the trips were being
arranged, this affected the learning process since some did not experience what others did.

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 6.0 RECOMMENDATIONS
The internship program should continue as it gives experience to the students before we go to the
industry.
The department should arrange visits to the student allocated places and the presentations should
be done there with the supervisors present.

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