ADENIYI OmotumiTaiwoA2026-01-122026-01-122021-09-11https://ir.funaab.edu.ng/handle/123456789/540AThesissubmitted1totheDepartmentofAgriculturalEconomicsandFarm Management, College of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, FederalUniversiJ ofAgriculture Abeokuta,fortheAward of theDegree of Doctorof Philosophy in Agricultural Economics (Agricultural Marketing and International Trade)ABSTRACT Seasonality ofagricultural commodities andtheir consequentprice volatility isinevitable and problematic if enoi nous and unpredictable.This study assessed produce seasonality and price volatility ofselected fresh fruits inmarkets intheSouthwest zone of Nigeria. A multistagesamplingprocedurewasusedtoselectrespondentsfromAla,Ifon,Ilara, Odopetu,Akesan,Araromi,Bodija,andOdo-Obamarketsinthestudyarea.Monthly retail prices ofplantain, banana, pineapple, and orange, from January 2003 to December 2015, wereobtainedfromOiiJoandOyoStates'AgriculturalDevelopmentProgram offices. Data were analyzed usingdescriptive statistics (mean and percentages), Gini Coefficient, AugmentedDickeyFNler(ADF),PhillipPerron(PP)analysis,Kwiatkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shin(KPSS),GeneralizedAutoRegressiveConditionalHeteroscedasticity (GARCH)andthe, Au*.t›RegressiveConditionalHeteroscedasticity (ARCH).Findings revealedthatthere were morefemale(74.2%) thanmale(25.8%) marketersintheselected marketsand92.8% of“be respondentswere married.Gini coefficientsshowedthat the ruralpineapple tmde wasthenearest tomonopolymarket (GR=0.73)whiletheurban plantainmarketwastheclosesttoperfectcompetition(G=0.17).Banana(GR—0.66,Gu =0.58)andorange(Ga=0.62,Gu=0.51)marketsreflectedamoderateoligopolysituation withahigh(XY=0.417)and(XY=0.381)degree ofsellerinequalityandmarket concentrationrespectively.Fromthe two-tailedt-testofdifferenceoftwoat te0.05,the mean retail prices in the urban markets (N102.73 -N1,161.36) were higher (p<0.05) than inrural markets (N82.80 -H715.91). ADF unit roots analysis revealedthat prices of the selectedfreshfruitsPit)werestationary(ADF=-12.4456to-6.4380)atlevelsPitI(0) andADF=-16.8126 to-8.6026) attheirfirstdiffereiices and P;iI(1), p<0.05. ThePhillip Perronunitrootanalysisrevealedthatpricesofallthefreshfruit(P;i)werestationary(PP =-12.4465to-6.499270)atlevelsP;-I(0)and(PP=-147.6859to-19.73897)andattheir firstdifferencesandkgI(1),(p<0.05).Johansen'sTraceand Maximum Eigenvaluefor pricesatP;-I(1)withr<1revealedthatthemarketshadastablelong-runrelationship (p<0.05).manger Casualty testshowed unidirectionalcausality (p=0.9486) among most selected marketpairsacrosstheStates.Rural marketsoccupied theleadership position for all theprices (R2<â)thereby informing prices inthe urban markets: Vector Error CorrectionModelestimationshowedahigh(R2= 0.720473)degreeoffitforonlyrural bananamarketaccountingfor72.0%ofthevariationintheshort-runpricechange(p<0.01) with (13.0%) price shocks (of rural banana market) corrected immediately.ARCH (o) = (0.909672 to -0.054322) and GARCH (§) = (0.991986 to -0.011384) coefficients for all the fresh fruit price series indicated the persistence of volatility shocks. Furthermore, the average rural (H = 23.5013) fresh fruit price volatility was highly influenced(72.0%) by those of the previous months and average urban (A= 35.2 594) fresh fruit price volatility was highly influenced (99.0%) by that of the earlier months. In conclusion, the prices of theselectedgreenfruitsgenerallyfacedaveryhighlevelofpricevolatility.Market reforms should focus on the rural (lead) markets to increase marketing efficiency.enThesis