Cabbage (Brassica oleracea) Production in Kenya: A Review of its Economic Importance, Ecological Requirement and Production Constraints

Abstract

Cabbage is an important vegetable containing considerable amount of water, protein, lipids, carbohydrates, fibre, vitamins, assorted minerals, phenols and glucosinolates. In Kenya, cabbage production is done mainly by smallholder farmers for food and sale. The crop is mainly grown between 800m and 2900m above sea level. It plays an important role towards achieving improved human nutrition and health conditions, reducing poverty through food security, and enhancing ecosystem resilience as a source of income, human food, and livestock feed. Statistics show that though the average area under production has been growing since 2017, average production has been fluctuating and consumption increasing steadily. Profitable production of the crop within the country is mainly constrained by myriad of factors such as climate change effects, pest and disease prevalence, poor agronomic practices, land degradation, soil health deterioration, lack of structured marketing systems and poor research-extension- farmer linkages. Possession of limiting climate-smart agriculture knowledge and skills, challenging access to credit facilities and agro-processing technologies, as well as narrow post-harvest loss management knowledge and skills, was identified as other key cabbage production constraints within the country. It was however noted that the country has the potential to achieve profitable cabbage farming if the adoption of climate smart technologies, farmer-extension linkage, government policies, credit facilities as well a structured market system were streamlined. The current work reviews the cabbage crop, with emphasis on its biology, economic importance, ecological requirements, current production status in Kenya and production constraints.