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Recent decades have seen an increase in groundwater pollution thought to be a consequence of increasing intensity of land use, primarily through greater use of high N analysis materials as fertilizers. A two-season lysimeter experiment was carried out in a wetland in central Zimbabwe in order to determine the effect of cattle manure quality on (1) NO₃–N concentration in leachate and nitrate leaching (2) dry matter accumulation and uptake of N by tomato and rape crops grown in wetland conditions. Two cattle manure quality types based on N content were used in the experiment. The manure collected from a kraal of the smallholder wetland community was classified as high quality manure (high N, 1.36 % N) while that collected from the adjacent commercial farming area was classified as low quality manure (low N, 0.51 % N). The two manure types were applied in rates of 0, 15, 30 Mg ha⁻¹. The …