Diversity of Rodent Pests, Farmers’ Perception and Strategies for Rodent Pest Management, In Bebela Kosa Farmers Association Mana District, Southwestern Ethiopia

Abstract

This study was conducted to assess rodent pest diversity, farmers’ perception, and strategies of pest rodent management in Bebela Kosa farmers’ association, Mana district in Jimma zone of southwestern Ethiopia. Rodent pest diversity survey was conducted from February, 2024 to July, 2024 during both dry and wet seasons. Rodents were trapped using live and snap trapping procedure to collect data for the diversity of rodent pests. Trapping was conducted in representative farm fields in the Bebela Kosa farmers association. Data on the perception and conventional rodent pest management techniques employed in the research area were gathered by questionnaire surveys, focus groups, and field observations. A representative Random sampling was used to choose farmers and householders. A total of 211 individual of rodent pests were trapped from Bebela Kosa farm fields. Five rodent pest species in both dry and wet seasons; names Arvicanthis dembeensis (13.70%), Mastomys natalesis (27.50%), Mus musculus (18.00%), Grammomys dolichuros (22.30%), and Rattus rattus (18.50%) were identified. The wet season capture 123(58.30%) was more pest than the dry 88(41.70%) season capture. Among four farm plots, more rodents 80 (37.90%) were trapped in barley and 64 (30.30%) in the wheat farm plot; the lowest abundance 28(13.30%) was in teff and 39(18.50%) in maize farm field were captured. The farm fields close to the forest were more susceptible than those farther away from the forest farm fields. The result of crop stage has shown the highest crop damage occurred during maturity stage and the lowest during seedling stage. Most farmers of study area has great interest to control rodent pest from their crop fields using rodenticide (55.10%), Field sanitation (59.12%), trapping (56.20%), and domestics cats (68.25%). Majority of the farmers agreed that rodent control is important to increase crop yields (88.00%) and farmers believed that rodent pests can reduce crop yield and can manage if farmer’s corporation worked together (86.90%) responded. The questionnaire response frequency a given issue, percentages of the total number of respondents and frequency were using Microsoft Excel sheet to be analyzed form of table, bar graph and percentages of farmers responded were used. The ended-closed questionnaires were processed with SPSS software version 22.0 computer. The result of the focus group discussion was analyzed in text explanations. One way ANOVA was used to compare body measurements among individuals of rodent species and seasons. The statistically significant change in the overall abundance of rodents of the wet and dry seasons χ2 (chi-square) tests were used.