Residents in Lagos and other parts of Nigeria are already grappling with massive fuel queues at filling stations, but it's a situation about to be exacerbated by attacks imposed on petrol marketing firms by Nigeria's federal government. The World Bank has urged Nigeria to urgently strengthen its fiscal management, create a unified, stable, market-based exchange rate, and it has reiterated the need for the country to face out what it calls its costly, regressive fuel subsidy. We'll unpack this ahead on the programme. And enough of the press to bring you in-depth analysis of today's major newspaper headlines, all these ahead on the programme. We're back with a breakfast and plus TV Advocates. A beautiful, beautiful morning right here, a Wednesday morning in the city of Lagos. And of course, we're reaching you on DSTV and StarTimes. We have an interesting package for you at this point. So I urge you to sit back, grab whatever it is you have. I mean, I have a cup of coffee here, and then you can have yourself a fantastic programme. We'll start off with a top-trending segment where, of course, yesterday some media houses reported and the social media space went agog with news that the Independent National Electrical Commission had been ordered by a court to resume voter registration ahead of the 2022 general, 2023 general elections. Of course, the voter registration exercise started in June 2021 as a continuous voter registration exercise started in June 2021, and it ran for 12 months to June 2022. But Syrup and 185 other Nigerians had taken INEC to court seeking for an extension of the voter registration exercise. And of course, the court granted that relief, and INEC was ordered to continue to extend the voter registration exercise. The commission continued the voter registration exercise extended to the 31st of July. 2022, and of course, that was it. We thought that would be the end of the story, but it seems it's not the end of the story. As we got this news, this information that the court had ordered the Independent National Electrical Commission to continue registering Nigerians. However, before the end of the day, the sources that came out with this information, because we're all going, I personally went on Twitter to tweet about it and to share the good news with Nigerians, but you see the thing about this is you must be able to see the court documents. At least this is something. And none of the sources quoted the judge, Milord, the Honourable Justice, Iyang Ikor, the same judge who's handling the Nnamdi Kano treason case. And that for me was a bit, you know, was something I was looking for. Before the end of the day, yesterday, some sources cut to clarify that the court had actually refused to order the Independent National Electrical Commission to resume the voter exercise. Now, what's this case about? Some Nigerians had taken the Independent National Electrical Commission to court, led as a suit led by one Anajat Salmat and three others, I won't go into your names now. The plaintiffs had sought three reliefs, and this is very interesting, very interesting indeed. All right, so I want you to follow me. The plaintiffs had sought three reliefs, all right. The first relief, the second relief, and the third relief. The first relief was a declaration that INEC by law is expected to continue voter registration until 90 days before the general post. That was the first relief. Second relief, a declaration that INEC is constitutionally required to ensure that all eligible voters participate in the 2023 elections. And the third relief was a court order, compelling INEC to resume the continuous voter registration exercise immediately until at least 90 days before the general election. Now, by calculation, yesterday meant it was 95 days to the commencement of the general elections in 2023. The national elections, you want to call it that, the presidential elections and the national assembly elections hold on the 25th of February, 2023, while the state elections, the governorship elections, elections into the state houses of assembly, hold on 11th of March, 2023. So by calculation, we had technically 95 days from when the court was given its judgment, the judge was given his ruling, 95 days to the resumption of elections or to the holding of elections in 2023. Now, when we got the update and we began to see quotes of what Millard, the Honourable Justice in Yanga course said, it became clearer that this order was not what it seemed like. Now, the judge agreed with the plaintiffs on merit, saying that indeed INEC ought to continue with the voter registration exercise until 90 days to the election to allow all Nigerians to allow them, all eligible voters in Nigeria, the opportunity to get registered to vote. But what the judge said was that the element of time had to be factored in. And by his calculation, there was little to no time for the Independent National Electro Commission to do anything. Therefore, he declined granting relief number three, which is, I'm just going to scroll down to that, a declaration on order rather that INEC resumed the continuous voter registration exercise immediately until at least 90 days to the election today. Today makes it 94 days to the general election 2023. Today makes it 94 days. And I know some people that were saying, when the initial news came out, yes, in conversations that I was able to have with some one or two presidents, yes, indeed, INEC can just carry its personnel, carry its officials and head to the voting centers immediately to go and start registering Nigerians, at least we'll have some people registered in five days. But I asked the question, how many people, how many eligible voters will get registered in five days? Who could not get registered in 13 months? It was meant to be 12 months. And the Independent National Electro Commission was taken to court. And as a result of that, they had to extend it by one month from June 30, 2022 to July 31, 2022. So what will we do in five days that we couldn't do in 13 months? I don't know if you have an answer for that. So the controversial section or the section of the electoral act 2022 in question happens to be section nine, all right, section nine, where the commission is mandated to continue voter registration exercise for not later than 90 days to the election. Not later than 90 days to the election. We have section nine, subsection one of the electoral act 2022, section nine, subsection six of the electoral act 2022, section 10, subsection one, and section 12, subsection one of the electoral act 2022, YNIC is mandated to continue voter registration, to update and review the voter's register until 90 days before the general election, all right. So the court, the judge added that, quote, this court is unable to grant relief number three of the plaintiffs, relief number three, which I just read out earlier, because going by the date of this judgment, quote, I'm still quoting the judge, this is as per, as per the cable engine, because going by the date of this judgment, from the date of this judgment, the defendant will have just a few days away from 90 days before the general election of February 25, 2023, and March 2011, 2023, all right. So the sources that came out with this story, who are credible sources, did an update just to give us the information. But it was, it's interesting to listen to the commissioner, voter, national commissioner information and voter education of the independent national electoral commission, who we've regularly had on this program. We need to have him back. Mr. Sokoe, he appeared on a television program last night and also told Nigerians, and this is the beauty of the whole thing, it's interesting, let me say, that was technically and legally impossible for the court to even make such a pronouncement on order for them to go back and start registering Nigerians, even if the judge had said, in the next five days they must register, it was technically impossible, though he said the independent national electoral commission had not been served with a copy of the certified true copy of that court order. But the question is, didn't they have a counseling court, but I'm sure the lawyers and legal minds out there know how these things work better than we do. Anyway, so this is quite interesting, he cited section 19 of the electoral act that says that they need to display, I like the independent national electoral commission needs to display the voters registered to the public, be it fiscally at various centers or online for registered voters and Nigerians in general to make claims and objections, which is what they've been doing. But this is it, the electoral act says, it must be done not later than seven days before the 90 days expiration, seven days before the 90 days expiration, which means that you can't be registering people at the same time wanting to display, because what are they going to see? So they have seven days for the 90 day expiration to display the complete voter register for claims and objections. So technically they cannot even register people 97 days to the election. Now you ask the question again, what time will INEC use in completing the registration they had, printing the voter cards, doing all those things they need to do, cleaning up the register the best way they can, before pasting these names at the various centers or people to see it online. Right now INEC has been able to weed out about 2.7 million names from the voter register, about 2.7 million names. And they're still working on the register to ensure that they clean it out, you know. So it was going to be technically impossible for them to do this. Now the question also arose, does INEC, the independent national electoral commission have the power to decide when it wants to end the continuous suspend rather, so to speak, or so to say, the continuous voter registration exercise, ahead of a general election? And First of all, Korea informed or reminded that a court of court and jurisdiction, a federal high court had already given a ruling stating that INEC has the power to decide when to suspend the continuous voter registration, so that it can do the compilation quickly to be able to display the voter's register for claims and objections from the public. And as we've seen in recent weeks, there have been a lot of complaints, and people have made some observations as to some things, the discrepancies they've seen in the register, including seeing the faces of those who look underage, seeing names appear multiple times with the same face, but with different voter identification numbers and some other things like that, so it is very important INEC is given time, given time to be able to clean up the voter registration, voter's register. So I think what the judge, his lordship, Iancor said was that this case had been overtaken by time, and I'll ask again, what you couldn't do in 13 months, is that what you do in five days, I think it's important for the citizens to always not wait for the last minute, you know, before going out for national exercises, be it the voter registration, SIM card registration, or whatever, which is the way we've been doing things in this part of the world. Let's move on. The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, an agency some people have been trying to understand what exactly their role is, you know, because sometimes it gets a bit blurry, but they've been working, they've been working. NSCDC, we call them civil defence. Well, this agency of government that is now armed, because of course they ask Nigerians to allow them bare arms and to help them carry out their responsibilities. Well, the Acquire Boomsday Command of the NSCDC has impounded nine trucks loaded with 400,000 litres of suspected adulterated petroleum products and nabbed two suspects. We hear that the State Commandant of the NSCDC, Mr Suleyman Mafara, issued a statement in Uyghur, the Acquire Boomsday Capital, where he disclosed this statement was made available to newsmen, and it's quite interesting what the NSCDC is doing in Acquire Boomsday. Let's just get some more of the background of this stuff. The NSCDC Commandant in Acquire Boomsday set the seizure, was made possible by a combined team of the NSCDC Operatives, the Nigerian Army, the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria as well. This is quite interesting. Nine trucks loaded with 400,000 litres of suspected adulterated petroleum products, and this would have made its way to the petrol stations and of course people's cars would have suffered the consequences. They wouldn't even know where the problem is coming from. The mechanics will be smiling to the bank. They probably will curse government and all that, but we get to see that we are also part of the problem. We are also part of the problem. I was just complaining to our production staff of the air about how people just parked up in Charlie, blocking the road for those who were on their way to this part of Lagos this morning. And we have to ask ourselves the questions. What role do we have to play outside of government in the way the country is today? What role do we have to play outside of government with the way the country is today? Well, kudos to the Independent Petroleum, to the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps, the Nigerian Army, and of course the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria on that find, and I just hope that no other of such will be seen in a quite boom state again because people cannot continue to suffer from adulterated petroleum products.  Now, this is another one that I have close to my heart, the next trending story. It's bizarre. I have consistently asked why Nigerians are silent on the performance of the Ministry of Finance because look at the way the economy is today, the state of the economy, the level of financial management at the state of financial management, the method and the performance of this administration as it consents financial management has left a lot to be desired, as say the revelations in recent times in the past have shown. The latest one is a situation of budget panic, let's call it that. This involves two women, not to cast suspicion on a female folk, but this involves two ministers in the Cabinet of President Mohammed Buhari. One is the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, the other is the Minister of Finance and National, should I call it, the Minister of Finance, let's just leave it at that, but she's actually the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning. The Ministry's departments and agencies have been making representation at the National Assembly defending their 2023 budgets. And you know, I mean, the government today in Nigeria is a government of borrowing, the government has to borrow to finance its objectives and to just to run the country. I mean, it was some weeks ago, a couple of months ago, that the Finance Minister, we're together with the man we call Mephi, Gordon Mephili, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and former presidential aspirant of the platform of APC, went to the global financial meetings to ask for more loans. And some have asked, and personally I would always ask, you know, is it a job of the Finance Minister just to announce how much the country is borrowing and how much the country is spending, what personality is this Finance Minister bringing to her job?  I mean, anyone can do that, but what personality, what is she about, what's her philosophy, what's her ideology? Now, we've seen Finance Ministers in Nigeria in the past, we've had the likes of Dr. Ngozi Okonjewheela, we've had the likes of even Kemi Adelshun, and I can guarantee you that you would have seen some sort of body language, some sort of personality, ideology or philosophy from any of these two, you know, play out in the charade that we have in the country today, as far as the government, you know, financial activities are concerned, all right, the fiscal side of things, it is quite sad. But now, what we have is the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs goes to the National Assembly, sits before the Senate Committee on Special Duties to defend their budget, and of course, Sadia Farouk is the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, and the budget committee says a, or the Senate Committee rather says a, we're seeing a certain 206 billion error in your budget that you can't explain. Where is it coming from? Of course, Ishak Oabo is a member of that Senate Committee, we won't go into his own file, we'll leave his file for another day, all right, we'll leave his file for another day. But remember the minister, the senator who was embroiled in some, some controversy, some time ago, that's the man. So they said, okay, where is this 206 billion error coming from? All right, where is it coming from? We have, we have to borrow to fund the budget, and it seems you as Minister of Humanitarian Affairs are unable to explain, to tell us where this money is coming from or what this money is meant for. And they've therefore summoned the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning to explain this in session of 206 billion error into the 2023 budget of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs. I'm not saying or trying to suggest there's any hanky-panky going on, all right, I'm not trying to suggest that, but this is what the committee on special duties, as I said, has said. Now the committee's chairman, Yusuf Yusuf, issued a summon because, like I said earlier, Sadiah Farouk, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, disaster management and social development appeared before the committee and could not explain this 206 billion error. Now this is what Ishak Abou said, he said you intend to borrow 206 billion error for a project. What are the projects to be implemented? And is it captured in the medium-term expenditure framework? It was quoted by the News Agency of Nigeria. If it is, he said, what are the specific projects, locations and activities attached to this? Now in response, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs said, you know, that they made mention of the projects in 2022, which were not released or funds were not released for that project. And part of it was for the North East Development Commission. The money was, I'm quoting her now, the money was not released. And now we have seen it recurring by almost tenfold. Fault is what she says. Quote, the money was not released. And now we have seen it recurring by almost tenfold. She says, we are also going to clarify from the Ministry of Finance to know the reason for this increase, in spite of the fact that the previous year, the money was not even released for the project. So we'll get the details and send it to you. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that? I mean, are these guys taking Nigerians for a ride or what? You know, that the Minister goes to the National Assembly to defend the budget and cannot even explain a humongous amount of 206 billion Naira and now says, is the Ministry of Finance that put it there? They don't know what it's for. They don't have the details. They'll have to go back to the Ministry of Finance to find out what exactly is going on. Okay, so before she went to the Ministry, to the Senate, didn't she sit down? Didn't she look at what was on the paper to prepare herself before going? Or was she expecting to just go and they would overlook it? And then that's another matter. Why they didn't overlook it? Another issue for another day. Let's not go into that. So what is going on? I'm not blaming the Ministry of Finance for anything here because we don't know. But is this acceptable? How does this happen? But you see, I blame Nigerians because things like this have been happening. I'm not talking about last four years. I'm talking about recently. I'm talking about this year and the financial management of the nation's economy. I'm not talking about the central bank now. Let's see. I'm talking about the federal government through the Ministry of Finance and some of the things we see happening. Nobody even says anything. In other parts of the world, they're trying to, they're summoning the Minister, they're asking questions. They're asking for resignations. Yeah. They say, no, the economy is not performing well. The Minister has to go. I'm not saying she's, it's her fault, but I mean, how does this even happen? How does this happen? We have to go. We have to go. We'll be back and when we come back, we'll look at what the people have to say.


Ever since the first successful powered flight, man has been fascinated with the possibility of expanding his horizons to the frontiers of space. Unfortunately, technology would take a while to catch up to man's imagination, but not for long. Manned space flight has become a reality which has surpassed even man's expectations. Now, it's time for the next step. Man's First Permanent Habitat in Space Sometime in the early 1990s, NASA plans to assemble and begin operation of its first permanently manned space station. Here at Marshall Space Flight Center, scientists and technicians are working to develop the modules which will be used as living laboratories for this long-term space exploration effort. The space shuttle will be used to ferry various space station components into a low-Earth orbit where they are to be assembled as they circle the Earth over 17,000 miles per hour. A variety of new construction methods are being developed as well. While based on those used on Earth, they must be adapted to the peculiarities of outer space. At the center of the space station are the pressurized modules where crews will work and live. Every attempt is being made to make their environment as comfortable as possible. The Habitation Module will be used for eating, sleeping, personal hygiene, waste management, and recreation. The modules will accommodate up to eight crew members. The Health Maintenance Facility is designed so the astronauts can monitor their own physical condition by checking their vital signs and using X-rays and blood samples. There will also be exercise equipment for daily physical conditioning. The U.S. Laboratory Module will provide a shirt sleeve work environment for performing many different experiments including materials processing, life sciences research, and solar system exploration. Many of the experiments require the unique environment of weightless space and offer incredible potential for solving a variety of medical and scientific problems here on Earth. The Logistics Module will consist of an interchangeable pressurized carrier which will provide expendable items such as food to be used by the space station crew on a continuing basis. The space station will also enable in-orbit assembly and checkout of large space structures such as antennas, astronomical telescopes, and satellites prior to their deployment in their own orbit. Also, the space station will provide an assembly area for construction of permanent man bases on the moon and beyond. Space Station, the link to America's future.


Hey, I just wanted to do a quick little update about the comic and how it's going and stuff for those people who watch me for comic stuff. A really casual like video about the process because I know some people like that and also I was looking at my old Emily is burning vlogs and I realized that I really liked them as well if that makes sense like I was looking back and I was like, oh, yeah that's how I did that and Found it a little bit inspiring. So last time I spoke this was kind of where the character design was heading Then I did This Pinterest page which was not really involved with the comic But it kind of loosened me up and made me think more about the looseness of the style of the comic that I wanted to do but here are more like character designs. I know that I wanted her to be Asian and Don't know why but I just had it in my head that she has this look just drawing different characters I found on Pinterest and stuff. I really like the style of this one and I definitely always have been using pencil in the past black pencil like I told you guys before hang on like in my Old comics where I've used pencil I've used pencil before and then alcohol markers and I do really like the look of that But I was thinking what I want to do is kind of mix up a bit this time And use pen. I know that's crazy to say considering. I've been very like Hang up on this pencil, but I think I've just been Leaning more towards inks this time. This is just like an experimental page then I did yeah, because I did this with inks and basically The story is about because I'm going to do two short stories again The same way I did would be other comics to where I had two short stories And this one is going to be based on a girl who gets something from an antique store But maybe she shouldn't have so I want the end pages to be similar to Emily's burning These are the end papers You know when you have the front and just before the story in the end So I'm going to do this pattern here for this comic, but I'm thinking what I want to do I like it like this, but I don't know ever to continue it. Just have a whole A4 paper or leave it like this I also did it with a Tom Boe pen Which is where all my pens are gone now because everything's spread out over my desk because I've just been drawing Tom Boe brush pen that I did this one with I just drew it straight no pencil lines anything and then I used alcohol markers on top Which seemed to be fine. It did smudge slightly in some spots, but we were good. We were good So I'm kind of trusting the alcohol pens Ink pen not to smudge too much So then I was looking at her character design again, and if I'm not gonna use pencil What am I going to use? I still really like the design with her face here of the pencil And I'm not sure whether that's because of drew it with pencil with the ink pen I was trying out different brush pens. So this one's slightly new and this one's like an old Pentel brush pen so you can get these like really nice Dry brush strokes if that makes sense that I really like working with I think it adds something to it Um, so I was experimenting with what the backgrounds would look like with this kind of style of pen And I did this background and it's super slanted But I would it would be like that on the page and I was thinking like oh, how would how would I put her into this Background even though this was just practice and I was thinking about tracing paper again because in the past I've experimented with Using tracing paper on images and things and I was just having fun having a little play Again thinking about her design and like how to display her. I don't know. I think I'm just Going off on a tangent, but I'm circling back around so it's gonna be a fine And then I was just drawing out her character a little bit more So I feel like this is kind of where I'm leaning towards her character design being and I am enjoying Using this brush pen and the alcohol markers so using this old brush pen and just showing Characters a little creepy image because this is a horror book after all and I revamped the script a lot too Which sounds silly because it's only like it's gonna be 20 pages of comic and I've just gone in and written like little Edits where I've just read it because I haven't read it for a while, and then I've just thought I Should reread this and see if I actually like how it is and I've just added a few things that Would make more sense to the story and yeah, I'm definitely Enjoying it better. I think I'm really excited about the ending now because there's just something a little I've added to it that Makes it whole whereas before I was like, it's okay. It's a nice. It's a it's a good story, but What is the point of it kind of thing and now I feel like I did that missing piece and it's just It's just made me excited to work on it again so what I did was A while ago I did the thumbnails for this when the script. I just like got the thumbnails out for some reason like really fast Without like thinking about it too much And I don't know why because now I'm like that doesn't really Work, but I've got some basis of what I couldn't use so I blew up all the Well, I scanned these in and then I blew them all up to fit how it would look on A page for an eighth a five eight five comics so Roughly, you know what it would look like as this size so yeah, I'm just going through and Figuring out the thumbnails I think what I'll literally do is go through these and like draw on top of it just to get the rough outline of it and then I Can see the story as a whole and I can evaluate and think about where I want to go from there But this is it so far. This will become this hopefully and it's going really well And I am really enjoying it. It's hard work because I'm working full-time So I'm just doing it after work and like on weekends and stuff and you know That time not everybody always feels super productive So it's slow going sometimes. I just feel like doing nothing other times I have to do like YouTube or little things like that, you know, it's slow go But we're getting there and slowly the flesh and out the characters The only thing is I finished the script for the other short story, which is called string About the theme park not theme park the haunted water park. I guess we could call it And I really like that script as well like really happy with it now I've just got to think about the character designs and the background and settings for that one as well I think I've totally been focused on this first one and I don't know why I don't I definitely can't work on them simultaneously So I need to work I need to do this one finish it and work on the next one Which is what I did with wishing on a star and slow disappearance And yeah, totally going great really thinking about What to do next so that's it from me. This is a really short just like ten minute update and I hope that you liked it. Let me know in the comments what your thoughts are so far and Everything still thinking of a name for this character and yeah, that's it So thank you for watching and I hope to see you next time. Bye


He's Yelly and that's Belly. It can get confusing, but one thing's for sure. He's chasing the triple crown So is he it's a feat that hasn't been accomplished in the NFL since 1937. So watch out if anyone can do it It's Yelly or will it be Belly? Two great guys two great talents in there in the outfield right now. They're wearing earpieces and microphones That's Christian Yellich on your left in left That's Cody Bellinger on your right in right. Hello guys. What's up guys? How we doing? We're doing good. I don't even know he's talking That's that was Christian That wouldn't even us in the booth as Kershaw takes over and deals high to JD Martinez With ball one. Let me give some specifics on Kershaw since 1920 the live ball era Clayton as the highest win percentage in the lowest ERA Minimum 1500 innings pitched that's saying something It's pretty good, huh? Yeah, I'd say that's good. Here's one foul outside third Cody you play behind Clayton Kershaw Whenever he takes a ball for the Dodgers Disguise the consummate professional. What's it like playing behind him? Absolutely incredible. It put him as epitomizes an ace on the staff I think the most impressive thing what he does. Oh Oh Here's one blasted in the microphone earpiece glove at all makes the catch Did you think that was gone when he hit I did What's it like Christian facing Kershaw you got plenty of him last year during the NLCS I'll tell you what it's a lot better being on this side of the ball and not having to worry about hitting that slider curveball He does a lot of things up there that I can tell you if the ball is gonna be foul or not I can help you without you can save your energy I'm right down the line. Pretty much appreciated. Okay Nothing and wanting to count on Alex Bregman Who is just bursting with confidence last year hit a 10th inning home run and was the all-star game MVP? Astros locked him up to a five-year $100 million contract or as he told me five-year hunch It's all about right. Yeah He's a beauty man. He is fun to watch And a good young face for the game. That's Ball two two and one. I love what you two guys are doing Cody and Christian it seems like you've embraced this whole chase for the MVP and have a lot of mutual respect for one another Christian you want to hold on play baseball right now to one pitch No, we're good. I'm yeah, he's had an unbelievable year.  You always want to root for your friends and it's a good competitive nature where you're both pulling for each other and You know, we had that series in early April or so like everybody's going back and forth. We play each other the playoffs back and forth series unfortunately Cody had to hit that Homer in the second inning there in game seven back, but uh, you know, what are you going to do? It's fun to watch to two pitch now to breakman is hit Stopped it but could not complete the play. He is a vacuum over at third base Well, we're showing your stats guys Christian and Cody you're one and two in home runs You're one and two and on base percentage and you're one and two and slugging percentage As Michael Brantley gets a warm ovation here the former Cleveland Indian representing the Astros This is a guy that's tough if you're outfielders to defend because he can spray the ball over the place He can go line-to-line and he's got such a smooth swing. Nothing seems to bother him. He doesn't over swing pure hitter And just dead still at the plate. Oh That's a ball. I know from talking to you Christian. You were quoted last year saying, you know worry about launch angle Cody do you worry about or think about launch angle? No, I don't I think that just happens Over time. I mean I try to hit the ball up in the air in the cage Somebody go get that that's in the gap a Junior going to get it. He'll get it back in. Here comes Bregman throw home by Mago is too late and the ale jumps on top one to nothing And their old friend Michael Brantley delivers the two-out RBI double Is it as loud out there as it sounds dirt through my headset? Yeah, it's really loud. Yeah, whenever the music comes on Layering in my ear. It's all right though one ball one strike runner at second two out And that is strike two. We heard Justin Verlander's opinion on the baseball Do you guys think the baseball is? tighter as less drag is jumping more in 2019 Yeah, I mean too. I'm not a scientist. So I'm just trying to hit the thing or whatever it does it does I'm with Cody on that one. I think all of us hitters are Stronger right where they're at. You're stronger. Just say it. You're strong. We know what we're doing with our swings more now Don't change a thing a strikeout boys. Thank you very much.  Nice to do it. Thank you Al jumps on top on a two-out RBI double by Bradley fun night in Cleveland continues back after this from your local Fox station


Hello, everyone. I would like to welcome you all to our sixth and final webinar in our Water Productivity Masterclass series. My name is Lauren Zalinski. I am part of the Water PIP team from IHE DILT and I'm joined by Abraham Abishak, also part of the project team from Mehta Mehta, and we will be moderating this webinar today. We're very excited to see everyone here, and if you could introduce yourselves in the chat box, we would really appreciate it, so you can put your name, the organization you're working with, and the country that you're from, and it helps us understand who our audience is today. So, if this is your first webinar, I would like to tell you that the webinar series is brought to you by the Water PIP project, which is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and it brings together different organizations that focus on water science and water management for the purpose of improving water productivity in the agricultural sector. So, most of the activities are being carried out by a group of three organizations. They are IHE DELT, Institute for Water Education, Bacheningen University in Research, and Mehta Mehta Communications and Research. So, we're very happy to have you all join us today, and if you are returning attendee, welcome back. It's nice to see you. Like I said, this is our sixth and final week, so it's been quite a journey. We started in June with an introduction to water productivity and how to monitor water productivity. The next two weeks, we focused on using the Wapour portal and the data within that portal to monitor water productivity, and then we switched to talking about a specific crop, talking about sugarcane production and concerns around water productivity. Last week, we focused on the social and economic parameters around water productivity, and finally this week, we will be learning about aquacrop and how we can use that software to also monitor different parameters around water productivity. If you would like to re-watch the recording from today or download the presentations or do so for any of the previous webinars, you can go to the project website at waterpip.un-ihe.org, or you can go to the waterchannel.tv. So, both of those websites will have the videos, and then the project website, you can also download the presentations and find additional information. The project is also on social media, so if you are on Twitter and would like to follow us, our handle is at waterpipproject. There we put out notifications on new events and new publications or project reports that we put out as part of the project, and we're also on YouTube, so you can subscribe to our channel on Waterpip Project, and there you can find all the videos from the webinar series, and in the future as we have more events, you can find the videos there as well. So, the agenda for today will we will have presentations from our colleagues at Vakeningen University in Research, so first we will have Maria Cristoforado, and she will talk about the agronomic aspects of water productivity and then followed by a simulation of the aquacrop software, and after that she will introduce a case study that we've been working on in Kenya, and then that will be followed by Hararovon Palsama, Associate Professor at Vakeningen, and he will talk about a diagnostic analysis of that case study in Kenya, and then also talk about a comparison between aquacrop and the WAPOR results as part of this this effort, and as always after the presentations we will have a Q&A session that will be moderated by myself and Abraham, so we will not pause in between the presentations, but if you have a comment or a question we encourage you to put it into the chat box, and while the presentations are happening Abraham and I will be collecting the questions, and then during the Q&A session we'll put them on the screen and present them to our panel for a discussion. So with that I think we're ready for Maria to begin her presentation, and thank you all for joining us. Thank you Lauren, thank you for your introduction of today's webinar. So I'm Maria, I'm working in the waterproof project as a research assistant with Vakeningen University, and today I'm going to talk about how aquacrop software works and how it can be used to do a diagnostic analysis and understand the reasons behind lower high values of water productivity. So at the beginning firstly I'm going to talk about these agronomic aspects that influence water productivity, such as feeding management, water stresses, and other forms of stress, then I'm going to present to you how aquacrop works and the simulation steps that it uses, and then I'm going to introduce the Cropman case study and the methodology that we used, and then Geraldo is going to discuss more in detail the diagnostic of each form that we simulated and present the aquacrop vapour comparison of the results. So we have seen in the previous webinars that water productivity is about the kilograms of biomass and kilograms of yield over the total amount of water that is evapotranspired, the water that is consumed. However, in turn this biomass in the yield is depends on the physiological processes of crop growth that affect transpiration biomass and the determination of the harvest index. The harvest index is defined as the percentage of the harvestable biomass against the total biomass production which of course defines the obtained yield that we have in the field. These aspects, the transpiration, the biomass and the harvesting index are also dependent on agronomic field factors such as water stress, temperature stress, field management practices, soil fertility and soil salinity stress. For example, when there is severe water stress, transpiration cannot take place and thus biomass is not produced. In turn, depending on the timing and the duration of this water stress, the harvest index can be either positively or negatively affected and affects also the yield. Additionally, we know that the initial soil water content is very important for the germination of the seed and possible shortages of water during these first days of crop growth can cause the complete die of the plants. Lastly, choosing a correct variety and appropriate variety depending on the climate is very important because it is not logical to use a variety with long growth cycle under rain-fed conditions and dry climates. Overall, all these agronomic factors affect the physiological processes of transpiration, biomass and the determination of harvest index and thus also affect water productivity. For this reason, in order to understand the reasons behind low or high water productivity values and direct our interventions in meaningful ways, we should understand and analyze the influence that these agronomic factors have. So Aquacrop provides an easy-to-use software that considers all these factors that I mentioned before. Aquacrop was developed by FAO and is a plant growth model that simulates transpiration, biomass and yield with a relatively limited number of inputs required. It gives a day-by-day water balance in a sort of vertical transect that studies the interactions between the soil, the plant and the atmosphere, the climate, as you can see in this graph. Aquacrop also separates the evaporation from the transpiration part of ET and thus it calculates biomass based on transpiration and does the beneficially used part of evapotranspiration. Aquacrop can be used in herbaceous crops such as barley, cotton, maize or wheat and is freely available in the link that I have put in the bottom of this slide. So let's have a look at the steps that Aquacrop follows in order to do the simulations. Firstly, the green canopy cover is simulated as a percentage of the soil surface that is covered by the canopy. In general canopy development is characterized by four growth stages, the emergence, the maximum canopy cover, the senescence and the maturity. The green canopy development also depends on two different aspects. The first one concerns the physiological properties of specific crops such as the type of the crop and the variety as well as the climatic and management conditions which involve the stresses, the water stress, the temperature stress, soil salinity and soil fertility stress. Based on these aspects Aquacrop simulates the actual canopy cover development as well as the optimal green canopy cover development that would have taken place in the absence of water stresses or other different stresses. In this sense Aquacrop can also provide insights in terms of production and productivity gaps. In the second step the transpiration is simulated. As we see in this brief flow diagram canopy cover is also used in order to simulate transpiration. Transpiration is also affected by severe water stress as I mentioned before severe water stress or aeration stress due to excess water can cause stomatal closure and thus reduce transpiration. Additionally transpiration is affected by soil salinity and cold stress. Moving to the third step that Aquacrop uses is the simulation of the biomass. As I said before Aquacrop calculates biomass production based on transpiration and thus the productive portion of evapotranspiration. Biomass is proportional to the cumulative amount of water transpired so the more transpiration the more biomass production and thus there is a linear relationship between those two aspects. Aquacrop uses this this aspect to calculate the biomass water productivity star which is normalized for the climate and the CO2 concentration. As we see in this in this graph the biomass water productivity star has a different range of values between C3 and C4 crops so Aquacrop also distinguishes between the photosynthetic capacities of different types of crops. Safer T stress affects also this photosynthetic capacity of the crop and thus the biomass production in total. This can also be seen in the equation that is just below the the graph as soil fertility refers to this KC factor. The fourth step of Aquacrop simulation is simulating the yield which is based on the harvest index. So the harvest index depends on two can can be changed based on two different parameters let's say. The first one refers to adjustments that take place due to cultivar specific requirements and are taking place for example when we have a failure of pollination or insufficient green canopy cover that results in that the crop cannot reach the maturity level. The second set refers to water stress severe or mild that can have either positive or negative effect on the harvest index. As we can see in the picture stresses before the productive phase and mild stresses during the yield formation can increase harvest index while more severe water stress during yield formation decrease the harvest index. So having said that having understood a bit the background of how Aquacrop works I will introduce the case study the Cropmon case study that we apply the Aquacrop simulation model. Our analysis was about two commercial wheat farms and three subsistence maize farms in Kenya and our our calculation were based on the field visit and master thesis research of Michiel Koesters of 2019. So in order for Aquacrop to assess the climatic and management stresses we need to have certain input files that we use for the initial simulation. So as a first step we input it a climate file with temperature and rainfall data that were obtained from the field from meteorological stations next to our farms from Tahmo organization. Then regarding the specific crop characteristics we inserted the planting date and the planting plant density based on field data. Regarding the rooting depth we we assumed based on the literature a rooting depth of one meter for wheat farms and 0.9 meter for maize farms. Lastly regarding the specific crop growth stages we used the default Aquacrop values for wheat and maize that defined the time that it takes for the crop to reach the next stage. In the next step we had the management file and since all farms were rainfed we didn't include any irrigation schedule or irrigation inputs. In this in this file we also inserted the soil we assumed some soil fertility stress and for for the wheat farms since they are commercial we assumed a relatively good soil fertility so we assumed a stress of 15 percent soil fertility stress and 10 percent of wheat infestation while in the subsistence farms maize farms we assumed a level of soil fertility of 40 percent and 15 percent of wheat infestation. As I will discuss later we we used this parameter to validate the results of Aquacrop with the field data. Lastly in the soil file we added the soil type based on soil classification maps and since the rooting depth of wheat and maize is relatively small we assumed no interaction with groundwater table. So after the initial run with the previously measured parameters we validate Aquacrop's results based on canopy cover field data of 10 meter resolution and the reported yields from farmers interviews. The parameters that we mostly used in order to validate was the soil fertility and wheat defense infestation and for the initial soil water content we assumed that soil water at the beginning of the planting date was at field capacity and thus it was enough water was in the root zone to to avoid water stresses during this initial period. Regarding the crop growth stages we had to adjust slightly the date of maturity so that we have a better fitting between the observed the reported yields and the simulated yields. And as you will see now following Gerardo is going to discuss more in detail how we did the simulations and the diagnosis for these farms. So I give the floor to Gerardo. Thank you Maria. I will just take you along the farms that we've been simulating in Kenya first to start with the commercial wheat farms. Rain-fed conditions and as I said we have two sets of field data that we can use to validate the simulation of Aquacrop. As you see in here in this graph my pointer works. Does it work? Okay I can't see myself but so here you see these black dots and those are basically the canopy covered data that we obtained through the Neo satellite images over the growing season. So that gives an idea of how did the canopy develop in this field during the growing season. The other set of data that we have to validate is the reported yield by the farmer. So in this case the 3.34 tons. And as Maria explained we have a given climate we have the soil data that we put as an input and then we can play with either the soil fertility or the wheat infestation to try to come up with the best match based on the canopy cover data that we have and the reported yield. And we're not touching yet the internal crop specific parameters that define the growth stages because basically we don't have detailed enough information to do that. But in this case what we see and see the results is if we set a soil fertility stress of 25 percent and a wheat infestation of 10 percent we get a reasonable result. The observed yield or the simulated yield is very close to the observed yield and we are fairly okay it's not perfect it's a reasonable simulation of the canopy cover. So the simulation in our crop seems to work quite nicely. And what it does enable is to look at how does the growing environment perform over the growing season. And over here you see a lot of information basically on the top bar you see how much transpiration has occurred during the season and as long as it is blue it basically says you meet the crop can transpire the amount that is required. And here towards the end of the season we see that the blue bars do not match the potential bar and basically we're facing a condition of quite severe water stress leading to stomata closure and that is we can see immediately here in the graph underneath which is basically an indication of how much water is available in the soil in the root zone and here towards the end of the growing season. We are building all the red line threshold line for stomata closure and we have quite some severe water stress which is indicated above it shows that we have too little transpiration going on. Looking at the canopy cover immediately we see that we stay below from quite from the beginning from the season we stay below the potential and that has to do with two factors that has to do with the fertility stress that we're imposed we're in this case 25-15 percent fertility stress but also during the early stages of the growing season we see that the water level drops below the green threshold line what we call the mild water stress that is basically the crop is losing its turbo pressure it does not have enough force to really expand its canopy development and in aquacrop that's defined as the canopy expansion stress so that is another water stress limitation on the growth of the crop and so basically we're saying quite we see that throughout the season the canopy cover stays substantially below the potential canopy cover and that will have an effect in terms of the biomass that is being produced and the yield that is produced so we have a biomass production only in this case of 7.9 tons per hectare and a yield of 3.45 tons per hectare and we can see that different stresses are playing a role in here so it's the fertility stress that affects the amount of canopy that can be developed and developed we have in the early stage of the season we have actually too much water too much rainfall which is leading to a little bit of a radiation stress then going into the canopy expansion of the emergence we have mild water stress which restricts our canopy development and later on in the growing season just as the flowering season is starting we basically have coming to an end we have a severe water stress which is leading to stomata cloaks so it's a combination of stresses that all accumulate and have their effect in terms of the total biomass that is being produced below so on the harvest and in this case what we see is that the harvest index which was potentially 48 percent is the default value that is that is adjusted to be 43.6 percent which is mainly due to the severe water stress that we see occurring from flowering and later it also provides us with an opportunity so looking at what could you do in such a condition in such a case and basically what are the management options for a farmer in these conditions which are rain-fed most obvious is of course to eliminate the fertility stress so what will happen if we would be able to provide enough fertility to this crop would that help and seemingly yes because according to the aquacraft simulation we will get a higher yield from 3.4 to 4.3 tons per hectare but it is not as much as we would potentially anticipate and it is basically because we still face that water shortage and the shortage in rainfall during the second half of the cropping season and in effect the water stress becomes more severe under no fertility stress than under in the case with fertility stress and that is because just the other way around so here the water stress is severe without fertility stress than with fertility stress and why is that because in this case now with no fertility stress we can immediately see we have a full canopy development in the early stage of the crop season but we are basically consuming more of the water stored in our soil at an earlier stage of our growing season so providing fertilizer in this case has some effect and it will have a measurable effect in increasing the yield but it will not increase it as much as you would hope for simply because we don't have enough water last during the second half of the growing season to to provide a higher production we see similar situations happening in the other farm the wheat farm and I think here we are more happy and exactly we assimilated in the in the same manner so again we have the canopy cover data throughout the growing season that we used and we have a yield that has been reported and in this case we were able to get a much better match between the canopy assimilated and the canopy that we have observed with the satellite images so we are quite confident that the default settings for the wheat crop as they are provided in aqua crop where they define the growing stages in growing degree days is working quite well for this case of the wheat farms in Kenya so basically we are validating that that basic crop file for for wheat in this case and also here you see the similar situation as in the in the previous wheat farm where we have a small limited reduction in the canopy because of our fertility stress but as the season now then we have some mild water stress in the beginning of the emergent stages which reduces the canopy development and later on we have some severe water stress which is really reducing again the the transpiration so different stresses occurring at different stages over the the growing season all having their effect on biomass on transpiration but also on the yield and in this case we have again due to water stress we have a mild effect on reducing the harvest index which is by default set at 48 percent in the aqua crop settings but because of water stress we have a reduction of the harvest index to about 46 percent which is mild the other reduction is basically just that we have not enough biomass produced to provide a higher yield due to a mild fertility stress and a quite pronounced water stress what we like with with the application and what we show with the second farm is that the default crop settings for for the wheat in this case seem to work well we'll see now when we're looking into the maize fields we're coming to a much more difficult situation which we basically try to do the same approach we have a set of canopy covered data which is very long and there is quite a bit of of noise which a section of this canopy data is is green we don't know we have a yield that is being reported and we try to match it and in this case as Maria was already indicated with that okay we the first step we can switch see with how much fertility stress can we use subsistence level small scale farming we know the fertility stresses occur a lot in east african rainforest conditions so we've opted for severe fertility stress in this case up to 40 percent which gives a not a very good match but the statistics are not good the other thing that we're facing is that that we face in this simulation is that we find it was difficult with the default settings of the maize crop to come close to the observed of the reported yield of the farm with the simulated to this end basically what we did needed to do is to change the crop settings within aqua crop and the only way we could come up with a a semblance between the simulated yield and the observed yield is by extending the maturity time for the crop by in this case a hundred growing degree days and basically now we are going to enter into a dangerous situation from a crop simulation point of view because yeah we're manipulating the basic crop settings within aqua crop and normally what you would like to do is to have do that on a proper calibration where you then have detailed information exactly about canopy cover but also on the different growth stages in the field so that you know okay now my crop is starting emergence on this day and the canopy cover is so much and it starts with flowering on this date and the canopy cover is so much and the same for maturity and so on but in the absence of this detailed data where we have a very clear link between the canopy cover the date and what's growing stage the crop is basically we lack the information to do a proper calibration of the canopy development for this crop so we did a slight manipulation it's okay if we increase the maturity by 100 growing degree days but basically we don't have the good field data to say that then we get a reasonable return in the yield yeah but the simulation in terms of canopy cover is is not so good but okay I guess an idea what may have happened and I think here you clearly see that the contrasting situation is we have much more water during the growing season and actually we have extended periods like here and here where we have too much water in the field which reduces transpiration and with that also some of the biomass production because of too much water in in the soil the canopy is is reduced primarily because of this severe fertility stress that we have introduced another issue that we face in this context is when we look at the yield and the harvest index of the situation there is a discrepancy between when the crop is mature in the simulation where you say okay after 154 days after selling the crop is matured and basically ready to be harvest however in the field the farmer in the reported harvest was 243 days so that's a substantial longer period now also from literature and from from other studies we know that it is not uncommon in some of the conditions of East Africa for farmers to leave their mace crops standing on the field after maturity to dry and to really to dry the crop standing out in in the field but this has risks also with regard you can lose some of your yield due to diseases and rotting if you leave it standing out too long in the field to dry out from literature we we know some farmers can leave it up to 90 days after maturity in the field but from a simulation point of view this complicates matters a little bit because the reported yield is that then does that include yield losses only during the growth stage so was that already yield loss at maturity or is that a yield loss that has occurred after the maturity has as a breach in the lack of detailed information this this complicates matters a little bit in this case we have a slight reduction in the harvest index and as you will see this is not due to water stress because basically we don't we're not facing a lot of water stress in this condition but it is purely because we have extended the maturity day date by growing degree days and then aquacrop simulation indicates it's okay at a certain point I don't have enough green canopy left to produce more yield so potentially I would be able to produce more yield but I just do not have enough green canopy left on my in my crop to produce more more you so we have a slight reduction going from about 48 percent to 50 45 percent a similar situation in in the maze in another maze field again we need to assume very high levels of fertility stress in order to come to some reasonable amount of of a fit between the canopy simulated and observed and the yields in this case however to really come up with with a good fit between the yields we had to extend the maturity even more to with 500 growing degree days and we know that the maze variety that is grown in this farm a is different than the maze variety in farm b whereas for the two wheat farms we know that both farmers used exact same variety of wheat now we're dealing with with situations of different varieties which we would expect to have slightly different settings in in their crop settings in in aquacrop so we don't have a very good simulation of the canopy cover but in the absence of additional detailed information we're not able to come to a proper calibration of the crop settings for for this case this is what we have to to do with so I have to be a little bit cautious with interpreting the numbers and and and the results interesting here I think if you reflected to the other maze farm we clearly see okay we have again we're dealing with the issue of fertility stress that we induce which is reducing the amount of the canopy but we have much more water scare situation to it's the end of the of the season with poor rainfalls occurring so that is affecting the the biomass and may also affect the growth stages and in addition to that we have temperature stresses where there is considerable cold stresses occurring during this growing season which will affect the crop growth and crop transpiration and and production again here so what we will see in this case is that we have a severe reduction of the harvest index to 27% and that is basically imposed by our setting yeah so we have to be a little bit careful with the interpretation of of this value it looks like a high value basically this is imposed by how our manipulation of the crop setting by extending the maturity time with the 500 growing degree days and in the absence of good field data we have to be careful with with these these numbers now we have a final maze farm maze ham and here again a third variety of maze is used we again used the the same approach we need how to impose a fertility stress of 46% and a weed infestation of 15% but we get a much better fit between the observed canopy data also the statistical values are much much more reasonable which is interesting because this was the oldest variety of maze that was used and so in this case this we can say there is a better fit between the default aqua crop settings for for maze and this old variety of maze that is being used in in this farm if we want to do a proper simulation for the other two farms we would actually have to do a more data intense calibration and we see that we get quite a good match between the simulated yield and the observed yield as well for this case now what are the options in here again we have quite favorable rainfalls at times too much rainfall occurring which leads to a reduction in transpiration but there is certainly no severe water stress we have to deal also with reported pronounced period of cold stress which reduces the growth and the yield but in this case compared to what we say as we are now not facing severe stresses during the the second half of the of the season in a case like this it would pay off to fertilize the land because seemingly we have enough water during the remaining half of the growth season and in this case what you will see in terms of the harvest index simulation we see that there are no severe stresses occurring in terms of water that affect the harvest index so the harvest index remains at 48 percent and the major reduction in production and yield is due to fertility stress and here we just give a slide summary and overview and I think you can look better into the details of these of the five simulations from from the powerpoint file later on but I think to stress well if we're interested in the water productivity in terms defined of the kilograms of yield the cubic meters of evapotranspiration we normally would expect a higher water productivity for for mace than for wheat and in this case we basically see that there is no no big difference in fact in some cases the mace is performing lower than the wheat and that is primarily explained by the soil fertility rates where the soil fertility stress in in mace it's much more pronounced than in the cases of of the wheat and as long as you favorable range throughout the entire growing season then you could address those stresses with with fertility management but in the case as in the farm farm a or also in the wheat farms you see where there is still pronounced water stress in the second half of the growing season then adding fertilizers will only have a limited effect as you basically increase the water stress further in the second half of the growing season but working for the and I think the what we say with this application of aqua crop it works quite quite well and quite nicely if you can combine it with field data sets with reported yields and you have some indicators of canopy development during the growth season are quite pleased with how the aqua crop settings for wheat work and with mace clearly we have a more complicated situation it seems to to work reasonably well for one variety but if we are dealing with other varieties clearly the crop file settings will have to be adjusted to reflect the growing dynamics of those varieties better but to do a proper calibration of those crop settings we really would need additional data to do that but I think it's interesting to clearly shows that there is an interest to develop those few the calibrations for different varieties of mace as we're working with the yeah I think this is already discussed as we're working with the water pay project we're also interesting to look at and see we can apply the aqua crop today very different or a very detailed simulation of the production in a field but how does this compare with the Vapor analysis and the water Vapor database so what we've done for five fields or four fields in this case one field wheat farm you see here on the left 40 hectares and three mace fields of smaller scale with one to two hectares and I think the largest of that one is four hectares to obtain also the Vapor data for that same field the same crop and that same growing season and how do that do those data compare then with our simulation results in in aqua crop so from the Vapor Vapor database we use the level two data because that's to do with where these fields were situated in in Kenya so we're dealing with a hundred meter resolution geo reference pixels we applied the the same planting and harvested dates as in aqua crop to define the simulation period or the data period for for Vapor we abstracted the seasonal Vapor transpiration the net production function which is based on the light efficiency which we then converted into above ground biomass for wheat and for maize and then Vapor mostly applies or can be applied with the fixed harvest index to obtain the yield and here in the stable we see the results coming to side by side and first for the wheat farm I think it's interesting to look in here we see immediately okay we have an issue in terms of the simulated Vapor transpiration for aqua crop about 330 millimeters for the growing season whereas from Vapor we only had 200 millimeters 199 so considerable lower there is some form of discrepancy between those two data where we need to look for further detail what is what is happening the same we see basically in terms of biomass the biomass reported from from Vapor is lower than the one simulated in aqua crop but given that the evapotranspiration is much lower than the one in aqua crop you will see that in terms of water productivity there's still quite a difference between Vapor and and aqua crop for for the wheat when we look at the maize situation this is becoming more pronounced and it is we're looking first at the ETA data although there are small farms much smaller farms actually we have a very good comparison between the evapotranspiration from aqua crop and Vapor for all three farms they're all within the five percent margin so that is what we would consider as a very good match between those two types of data where there is a very large discrepancy is between the reported biomass where for instance here in farm b we have a simulated biomass in aqua crop of 14.7 tons per hectare where is Vapor returns a biomass production of 41 tons of biomass for the same field which is actually higher than the maximum potential biomass reported by by by aqua crop this is consistent we see this very large difference in reported biomass between Vapor and and aqua crop which then immediately has an effect on the reported water productivities which then provide very different numbers here 1.12 for the aqua crop simulation and 3.13 for the for the Vapor simulation so I think clearly we this is an issue that we we need to look further into into detail and I think that the main issue that we're dealing with and that we have to look more careful into into detail is how does the Vapor calculation and the simulation of the net production how does that account for a fertility stress especially as in the wheat cases we're dealing with severe fertility stress we know that the canopy development is is is affected it's not only the size of the canopy it's also the the greenness of the canopy and the photosynthetic efficiency of the canopy well thank you maria and thank you herardo those were really nice presentations some of us are new to aqua crop so it was nice to get an overview of of how the model works from the different input parameters and then to see it actually apply to a case study and talk about the you know specific issues that come up when you're applying models in real life and then as well the comparison to the Vapor data and the the work that is being done in that perspective and we will also put up those references and the materials for the the aqua crop on the project website so people who are interested to learn more about how to use the program you can also access the links there so now let's start with the question and answer period we had a lot of nice questions in the chat so we'll put them up on the screen first question is from david hi maria and herardo we all know that for simulation to match with observation good input is required what are the variables that you think must be good to get good results it will be effective that intent aqua crop is able to to to simulate it in a very dynamic way i think we're we're we run into an issue now with with Vapor we have to look closer into how can Vapor in the simulation of the net production function simulate these fertility stresses because if i look here at the previous numbers these very high biomass production numbers derived from the net production function to me indicate that these stresses are not adequately covered yet so that's something that we for the next month are going to look into into more detail to see if we can address that that issue more specific um yeah this is basically we come here to to an end of of the of the presentation and hopefully i can open the floor to some questions and answers later on i think it's important to know that aqua crop is is a free software available from the feo it put a lot of effort in in the valuing net there's also a lot of reference and training material and that you can freely access so here we have provided some further references for you if you're interested to to look in that further uh and these are some of the uh these are the references that sounds like a lot of data is needed to run this program in the presentation for maria how is soil like managed in rain fed farming in our case we we didn't include any soil salinity stresses but uh i don't know maybe here are the ones to to discuss that more in general or to facilitate the discussion um yeah i think i think that's a very good good question i think what our simulation uh shows in here is that we we obtained uh you need good climate data uh daily climate data from a from a weather station in this case we used them from the timmo or tamo uh uh network which is spreading out automatic uh weather stations at secondary schools in uh and primary schools in in in kina so try to locate a uh a good climate uh station as close uh by you need a good soil uh data so you need to know what the soil data is and some basic uh uh canopy cover uh uh data as as we showed in the in three out of the five cases uh if you can find a match between the uh the yield that you record and the canopy uh over time over calendar days uh that that is uh uh from simon with regards to a wheat example with data requirements by top dressing later on in the growth stage but also in two nice cases where we really say okay now we are dealing with a variety of a crop that is really uh acting different uh uh uh than uh as defined in aquacrop then you really need a much more careful uh recording of uh uh the canopy cover during the time of the growth but as well as a recording of when is my crop going from one growth stage into the other growth stage uh so that you can match those uh data uh uh better now i i uh again i think that's an option that uh uh aquacrop provides as an additional option that you need to uh to deal with if you are uh facing sublimity stress we know that it will affect uh uh transpiration of a crop and it will therefore also affect the amount of photosynthesis and the amount of biomass that uh can uh uh can occur normal in situations where we're really very pronounced uh uh rainfall rainy seasons as we're dealing in in Kenya we have a good group image uh next question is concerned with salinity today if you are concerned with uh salinity and these are issues that you need to uh uh take into account them as an address aquacrop provides you with the opportunity if it is in rain fat then you will have to take soil samples uh uh to uh uh to know what is the salinity levels in uh in your soil uh and to set those parameters uh within aquacrop uh yeah it the and probably uh that might have uh have an effect but it will not have the same effect so can you please explain what it meant by water stress soil fertility stress and irrigation stress uh because you already have a reduced canopy size and a reduced uh production level at the earliest stage uh of the of the growing season and I think the whole point I think that is that is clear and that is also with the what we know also from from practices in uh in rain fat conditions uh fertility management and it pays out it's an expensive uh input uh for for for many farmers uh it only pays off uh if you have a secured water supply later in uh in this season and dealing with the rain fat condition that entails a risk yeah and so uh it may not always pay off completely uh from uh uh uh from that point of view to invest in very expensive uh uh fertility uh uh uh to have a very maximum uh yield if you don't uh if you're going to face uh water stresses later on no and that is so that is complicating uh uh the factors uh as well as that's what I mentioned also uh uh by uh in the maze where the actual hardest thing is after uh the maturity of the crop so there is additional time uh where the crop is standing in the field and maybe uh of risk of having full pests and uh and diseases these are not issues that can be uh uh uh uh addressed in uh uh in the aquacrop so that you need field information and then you can say okay I can expect what's the real past of the disease I can expect some different terms for everyone and a question from between the simulation result of high productivity when considering African conditions four to six tons per hectare which is different from data from FAO staff is your observation data from actual farm or from experimental fields and how can we approach that actual yields that farmers get? Think in a in a subsequent comment. Water stress basically uh there's too little water available for the crop uh uh uh uh uh uh to to transpire uh and at that moment uh when there is too little water uh the stomata will close uh and biomass production will immediately uh be uh lower uh and affected uh and uh well in the case of aquacrop we also see that mild water stress so there is still enough water uh for the uh for the crop to use in terms of transpiration but there's not enough water within the plant to be very rigid the crop has water stress it will become uh more uh less rigid uh which may hamper the the rate of canopy growth the the the the the velocity with which the leaves uh will uh will grow so fertility stress is really the uh the lack of nutrients so a fertilizer application uh are there any attempts to replace and that directly affects the state of canopy uh uh and especially also the the greenness of the of the leaves with that how efficient it is in producing biomass aeration stress are those conditions when basically there is too much water and when there is too much water in the field so we have uh uh standing water on the on the field a crop will have a stress in uh uh in oxygen the roots will not be able to uh uh to take up enough uh uh oxygen and we see that this also results in a reduction of transpiration uh and so it's it's very similar exact too much water has a similar effect as too little water and it will again affect the amount of biomass uh that can be produced at that moment now so these yeah and I think it's uh uh so the the files that are really uh uh derived from very uh uh from from the statistics that are provided uh to to FAO by the Kenyan government or other government so and they are uh administrative averages uh uh uh reported so the yields that we have uh used in here and that's also what we say the observed reported yield are those uh yields uh as reported by the farmer so uh and so there will be always be uh uh differences uh and I think in this case uh for commercial settings three to four tons uh or six tons uh uh uh uh uh and depending on uh on the range uh uh that we have also in Mays uh six down is uh is obtainable I think this is uh and another question from David we're looking at it and I think the uh the NDVI that is used in in in VAPOR uh basically you could try to use that also as a as a canopy cover uh data and that's basically I think a similar approach has been used in our simulations for aquacrop although we we took a uh a higher resolution image at 10 by 10 meters uh uh to uh monitor the canopy uh cover 80 80 zero uh values I think this is something that we need to uh do a comparison with uh uh especially to look at for instance in that case of the wheat farm where we saw discrepancy between the reported actual evapotranspiration of uh uh aquacrop and uh and VAPOR and I think it's worth about to look and try to do a bit more comparison okay what are the ETD not files for for VAPOR uh how do they compare to the the weather station files that we are using uh in this case because if there is a large discrepancy in those two climate sets then of course we will also expect deviations to occur in terms of uh of the production functions um we have a question for twitter how do you basically that has uh that can be done with uh NDVI over the ETL uh calibration and the net production function I think that's clearly the issue that we need to to look um in two more detail uh how the net production function is uh is dealing with is uh a stress situation like uh what sort of fertility strike and uh how we can approach that in a different way it's already the the outlines of those plots and the the resolution of the images so there's a mismatch and a challenge with the resolution of VAPOR and the fields of smaller farmers yeah I think it's uh uh and when it's raining it there's cloud power there's a lot of missing data during those particular periods so there's more uncertainty around the values and then there's also a question about the multi crop farms um we already showed in the previous webinars that if we want to use VAPOR we need a lot of field data uh and we can do something with like monoclops but mixed field crops uh is is very challenging to make any estimations and comparisons with the yield data from aquaflip or the fields so those are the the challenges in small water rain threat conditions so as as we can see there's a lot more work to be done by by our projects and by other researchers so it's a really interesting field um that will continue to develop in the future so I think that was our last question and I would like to thank the presenters thank Maria and Gerardo for uh your nice information that you shared with us and I would like to share everybody that attended and was very active in the chat it was nice to see people asking questions and and even answering each other in the chat aside from the answers that we saw in the panel so thank you to everyone and as this is our last webinar in this master class series I would like to thank you all for attending over the last six weeks and for engaging with us on the website as well as the twitter account and we would like to keep you guys engaged so please remember to keep in touch with us um connect with us on twitter follow us on twitter and on youtube and stay in touch via the website we'll be putting out publications as they get finished for different case studies and different information that will help you guys work through water productivity challenges that you're facing we do have more activities that the project will be working on we're actually working on a MOOC a massive online open course which uh in the upcoming months we'll make available to people to use so please keep in touch with about that we'd be interested to have you all attend that as well and we may be doing more webinar series so in the survey that people have completed you gave us some ideas some really nice ideas on how we can continue to engage with you guys over the upcoming months especially since we're not allowed to travel very much so having staying connected via the internet is is really important so again if you have not filled out that survey we really appreciate it it helps us a lot to figure out who you are and the interest that you have and how we can uh morph the project to to help you guys with your concerns and issues so if you have not filled out the survey as soon as this webinar ends it will send you directly to that link if you already filled it out thank you very much we only need you to fill it out once and then we get the information um if you are new please fill it out to help us so again i would like to thank you and i would like to thank abraham uh from mason mason he's really been helping us behind the scenes and setting everything up as well as the other colleagues in the water pit projects and uh our funders


Thousands of Palestinians have flooded the streets of Khan Yunus for a funeral procession for people killed in Israeli airstrikes a few hours before the truce took effect. Waving Palestinian flags and chanting for Mohammed Diyaf, Palestinians marched on the streets of Gaza and Hebron to celebrate what they see as a Hamas victory with the arrival of a ceasefire. Israel and Hamas both claimed victory on Friday after their forces ended 11 days of fighting. But a clash between the Israeli army and Palestinian protesters in the West Bank underscored the fragility of the truce. I came to protest about the cleansing they're doing for the Arab population in Shef Jarrah. Claiming using a law which is only standing aside Jewish, you can never see the government evacuating Jewish people from their houses and give it to the Arab only the other way around. We went out to the streets to celebrate the end of the war and to ask to make Israel accountable for all its war crimes and calling the international community to put a huge pressure on Israel to end the Israeli occupation, to end the Israeli apartheid and to end the Israeli oppression against the Palestinian people. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


So their bank reconciliation looks something like this you got the balance in the zero software so that should tie out to what's on the balance sheet so again you can kind of think of it as a check on expanding on a component of the balance sheet like many reports but again it's a little bit different for the bank reconciliation because it's an internal control and then we've got the plus the outstanding payments less the outstanding receipts those are usually the reconciling items and then here we've got all this unreconciled statement lines because we need to do the reconciliation process i believe is issue here but then it's going to tie out to the statement balance which should tie out to what's on the bank statement and that's going to be the general concept


So, hi, my name is Lara Nezoni. I'm not very good at computers I am a team lead lock picker pickpocket magician Challenge designer, and I'm really passionate about security The thing is I think we people sometimes work really hard for little results Whereas I'm more of someone who use little tricks to great effects.  So I'm helping the blue team as well So the first thing we're gonna talk and I'm going super fast because we have like 20 tricks in 20 minutes Physical security everybody's favorite. I really encourage you to try those but there are some things you need to take into account Have you seen one of those? Those are like basic HID Pin readers now. How could you attack this one?  It goes really well in your red team a kit It's that simple. Why do more? I Physical intrusion so some of you might do physical intrusion. We're getting in you would you piggybacked and Then you get into this paranoid mode like you're into this spoiler you're into this very large office and In that office like it's an open space if you feel everybody's looking at you You know, how can I get in and of course like in such an office? Everybody's seeing what you're doing. So what's the next step? Well You pre-print this amazing letter saying reserved for taxes purposes this accountant for the whole week Apologies and you stick it there and like every single time somebody gets into your room You're like, yeah, sorry that meeting is reserved Not my not my choice and you're able to reserve a room for a week And so we had to go to client every day for a week We put that on and we were able like by the fourth day. They knew we were here. They said hi and like It's very very nice. It's quite simple, but it's worth it I'm going really fast Logical attacks. So the first one here. Can somebody tell me what's wrong with this picture? once twice All right, so you might notice my name is Xerox printer 317 Why? Well, this is the world's easiest knack bypass so printers aren't really friendly with Knacks, so if you can't attack the technology attack the process So admins are super used to having alerts saying oh then this this printer wants to Connect to the knack. Should you wait list it? So they're super used of clicking yes so all you got to do is call your name Xerox printer or inkjet something something and And you'll see some admins will just whitelist you and it's as simple as this so Don't like there are really advanced knack bypass, but changing your host name is I think fairly simple By the same token social engineering few tricks So I don't know how familiar you guys are with social engineering, but there are ways to establish credibility or to Enhance your social engineering game. It's and it's quite difficult. It's a nerve-wracking the first few times you do it So I hope those tricks work So the first one is if you're doing social engineering in a like in a business environment you all have suits But sometimes the corporate culture people have polos or like you how can you what's the next step? Like how can you be further more convincing? so I got this weird hobby I collect lanyards and Lanyards are super cheap on eBay on a QGG you can buy like 10 for $1 You might notice some of your companies there. I apologize There are several more and basically They don't care about your your your your card if you got a right lanyard Like for real who cares you're at the skidded So all I do is I put the lanyard in my pocket like this Nobody sees my card and I go high and I get in and It's a simple thing. Of course if you're like here in my lanyard Of course, it's super shady, but if you don't care about it My favorites aren't ones are like auditors because nobody wants to talk to an auditor so It works super well. So lanyards. They're like I wish I had purchased one for several for everybody, but legal stuff But that's works really well and that's like people think about the suit But stupid things like a lanyard will really go a great way One more thing disarming that so that's an actually quite funny story We were in this engagement and we had to find the The username format so I call a spoof line number such as like every social journey thing and The person is super suspicious I present myself as that guy. I found a LinkedIn. He's like, are you really? And I'm like, yeah, I'm logging in. I have like that domain name slash Sorry, I have that domain name then the little line that's titled that's tied to the left He's like the little line that's tied to the left. What do you mean? Well, you know the line. That's not straight And you understand that you see him like oh That's a backslash sir Your account is this so I went from being the super like Suspicious person to all that just another user who forgot his account So as you're doing social engineering, you don't always have to use authority Playing it a dumb works really well and the word that little line that goes to the left is a great convincer same like when you say The way you say dots like Or dash you don't say dash you say Tres Union or like the way the way you say it Like think about your parents think about your grandparents the way they say things That's exactly what you want to reproduce and you'll see the the awareness of the people will go way way down Like it's not difficult.  Because we as pentesters sometimes make stupid mistakes, too Let me just come let's start with a word of warning though If you catch pentesters Make sure you catch threats as well Like you can't just say oh we had a pentest We had this rule to catch a pentest from that company because we hard to code in their Mac address we won and Then expect you to be actually secure so there are tricks to catch pentesters And it's fine just keep in mind that as long as you keep catching threats It's totally fine, but you can't just say we catch pentesters were secure. I had to give this warning So let's attack tools This one is called better cap Better cap is a terrible terrible tool For people who used it. It's like there's one switch. That's minus minus apocalypse and it does man in the middle HTTP sniffing It has everything So I wasn't this pentest once Super secure zone where nobody should know about like this top security. There's no users usually I'm doing men in middle and I See this link So it's an HTTP link. It's a YouTube link. I Visit the loot YouTube link and I have a Rick Astley like Rick roll And I'm like who in that zone? Keep sending me Rick roll links So I go visit the sock and I'm like good job guys. You cut me right? That's amazing. Good job They're like what are you talking about? We didn't send you those and Then we start stressing a bit because that zone there should not be any users It's like a super secure zone and somebody keeps sending Rick roll links So several investigations later We find out that this link here in HTTP It's hard-coded in better cap So you will keep sending a probe Every ten minutes to that YouTube link for status reasons Now you might ask yourself wait, isn't there a better better cap called better cap and G? Yes Is that feature still there? Yes so as a sock Having a trigger on that HTTP link is a very good IOC to let you know Well, perhaps there's somebody playing with better cap.  It's a very very good Post exploitation exploitation tool. It's like meta-sploit or but for the last ten years. It's very very good But sometimes it's difficult to identify what's the What's the listener so how can I know if that website in my log Runs a listener and this isn't my idea It's an idea from Louis who might be in the audience, but I thought it was super smart If you look right here, you might see there's an hard-coded key Like in the in the code. It's not an option. You can't disable it, but there's a page called welcome.png So with a very very very simple script like it's six lines seven lines You can identify Empire listeners all you're gonna do is is there welcome the PNG is there an image and does that image match this hash And you'll find partial Empire listeners like this so It's a it's a default people could change it but in the wild so far I haven't found anybody who change that change that setting so as a blue team all you're gonna do is run that those six lines of Python to all your websites if you'd like and you'll see what are the listeners Same thing for Kelly burp In a sock you might log your DNS requests And I'm sure you know that Kelly every time he booted up makes a request to Kelly org to update itself So the moment you see a DNS request for a Cali that To archive the Cali org, you know, there's a pen testers inside because I'm not sure I've seen any non past pen testers run Cali like there. There's very little business requirements to run Cali as far as I know Same for burp burp is the defect open testing tool for web app I think it's a great tool, but the moment you open you open it it checks for an update So if you see request to perf data that parts figure net, you know, you have a Burp somebody using burp on the inside So those are like stupid I use these but they're really reasonable to make and you'll be able to catch pen testers and sometimes threats now How about attacking tools? so For example burp As I said burp is a really really nice tool, but I want to know if somebody is using it Testing my website Now as you know burp does not you can set up burp the way that All the requests are exactly the same like you it could be an exact copy of a request from Internet Explorer. So how can you tell? well, the thing is burp listens on Slash-slash burp on every single port by default So all you have to do It's a very simple you visit The you have a script that all it does is it try to load the burp on three random ports say one two three four 8089 and 5501 and If those three pages load, then you know burp is open It's that simple so under this little gif gif here, sorry on this gif all you see is I visit the website first without Burp and I have this burp testing page and all I do is I change it to have burp listen I click on the same link and I have If it works, of course burp detected So it's a super super simple script and I like kept it's like I have the sources It doesn't show in this because resolution. It's on the page. It's a super simple script. It's like six links six lines of HTML Well, I told you the how to do it you check if those if frames load if they do success and That's it By the same idea and this isn't well, I Felt I was the first to discover it until I read this great blog by Givoise I think he's French right so if he's here congrats Basically, you can lie to burp you can have a web page as a polyglot that as you If you look at it in burp, it has a different behavior than if you look at it In a browser and that's because the way meta tags are prioritized So in a web page, you have a header saying this is included using this whereas in the There's a meta tag that could tell the same thing now Usually browsers will prioritize the header or the meta HTML tag But burp doesn't the other way around so that's something what looks like when you're opening your file in burp So it's super simple, but most people when they get this they don't understand why it could be some form of security drop security Is it foolproof? No, will it block script keys that take most of your website? Yeah, perhaps But as I'm talking I talked about vaccinating hosts so most commodity malware They check for the presence of a debugger They check if there's something like using fine window. Is there a debugger that's debugging me? And if there is it exits saying I'm being debug. This is bad How can I lie to my system and make it look? Like there's a debugger present Now I am sure there are super fancy ways My favorite is using calc So you might know calc.exe being the most favorite Hacking tool of everybody if you're going to recon or conferences like when you see calc. You're happy It's basically the same thing So you take calc.exe you copy it and you call it debug.exe.  Well, that's already 22 minutes. So thank you very much and have a nice day