Clipping pepper


In the north of Bombali district (Sierra Leone), very few farmers know and practice pruning techniques on pepper ("big or small"). Clipping is the removal or the pinching off of the terminal bud. As opposed to "topping", "clipping" is practiced at early stage, when the seedlings are still in the nursery. A main limitation the farmers encountered with the topping method was the additional workload it creates, as going back to every plant in the field is tedious, and represents an important task that comes on top of weeding, which is already heavy. The clipping method allows to considerably reduce this workload while having a significant impact on the production of peppers. This note provides a short presentation of the technique.