Nigeria establishes relationship with countries in seed crops innovation

Prof Morufat Balogun, Lead, Nigeria Geo-targetting Activities for Work Project 3 (WP3), Seed-Equal Initiative, says there is a quadripartite relationship between Nigeria and three other African countries in the seed system of vegetatively propagated crops.

Balogun, who made the remark while speaking in Port Harcourt on Thursday, named the countries as Ghana, Tanzania and Rwanda.

She said that the four countries had been cooperating under the umbrella of the programme for Seed System Innovation for Vegetatively Propagated Crops (VPCs) in Africa.

According to her, they are working on the four Vegetatively Propagated Crops (VPCs) which included, yam, cassava, sweet potato, banana and plantain.

Balogun said that the relationship involved sharing of success stories especially in problem solving, explaining, ‘’if Rwanda had a bottleneck and Nigeria has overcome that bottleneck, we made the stakeholders to interact.’’

She added that if the seed entrepreneurs were not able to get seeds or store seeds or had any problem, the country which had overcome the problem would share the solution to others.

‘’So we encourage participants who have experienced success stories to interact so that they learn from each other.’’

Balogun, however, said that there were two kinds of seed systems which are informal and formal, saying that farmers, in informal sector, just exchange any seeds without regulations.

She added that in formal seed system, there must be quality assured, farmers must be sure to get the most quality seeds.

‘’In the formal seed system, there are three classes of seed, the breeder seed, foundation seed and certified seed that are used to produce foods, like white yam, cassava plantain materials.

‘’When the breeder does breeding and produces new varieties, what it comes out with is the nucleus stock, from that, breeder’s seed is produced and then, it’s free from all diseases,” she said.

Balogun explained that normally, yam plant grows ‘’tuber at the bottom, and leaves at the top,’’ but Innovation had shown that when the yam nodes were cut and planted, it also yielded tubers.

‘’We call it minimize tubers that are used for planting which save transportation cost since this node turn into yam seed is less bulky and vigorously do very well.’’

She, however, urged government to assist educate farmers, share in their risks, provide storage system, buy back their produce, and make favourable polices to boost and sustain yields, and feed the nation.

NAN / Foluke Ibitomi