In a bid to boost production of yam, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, IITA has developed a technology driven high quality seed yam free of pests and other diseases.
The breakthrough was the product of the flagship project tagged ” Yam Improvement for income and food security in West Africa, YIIFSWA.
At a programme in Ibadan, Director, IITA -West Africa, Professor Michael Abberton, said the YIIFSWA project meant to solve the challenges of farmers’ inaccessibility to quality seed yam as well as unavailability of such seed was a success.
He urged GoSeed, a unit of IITA business incubation platform and other relevant agencies to establish good mechanism by which farmers could get access to clean yam of good varieties.
Speaking while handing over of 6,952.2kg of early generation seed yam of two varieties, Asiedu and Kpamyo to GoSeed for mass production for farmers, a Tissue Culture Specialist with IITA, Professor Morufat Balogun said the seed yam was equivalent to 463,480 unit of 15 grams minisett, adding that “it is almost four times of the agreement signed with GoSeed”.
According to Professor Balogun, breeders would also be distributed to the YIISFWA’s private seed companies partners, to cushion GoSeed production for this season, that’s with the total six thousand units of mini-tuber.
“Now, GoSeed is approved by the National Agricultural Seed Council to be producing early generation seed, which include the breeder seed and the foundation seed.
“So, growers will produce certified seeds from the foundation seed which the farmers will now use to produce yams that we can eat”.
“On top of that we have been training GoSeed two staff in the last one year, taken them through all the novel propagation technologies.
Also, Dr Beatrice Aighewi, YIISFWA II Seed System Specialist, at the event, spoke on the status of YIISFWA II novel propagation technologies and commercialisation of formal seed yam system .
On yam production constraints, Dr. Aighewi identified scarcity of high-quality seed yam of released varieties as the foremost constraint.
He said: “Traditionally, farmers recycle seed tubers by saving at least 30 per cent of their produce to plant during the following cropping season.
“These seed tubers are often infested with pests and pathogens such as nematodes, viruses, fungi and bacteria, that affect the quality of the seed and yields.”
According to Dr. Aighewi, to address the challenge of unavailability to quality seed yam, the flagship project, YIISFWA, has developed and validated tools and technologies to produce seed yam for the establishment of market-oriented seed systems, that ensure the sustainable supply of quality seed yam in Ghana and Nigeria.
“Some notable research achievements include: Development of pathogens-elimination system, using meristem tissue culture techniques combined with heat therapy is one of the notable research achievements of YIISFWA.
“This method gets rid of viruses and endophytes from nucleus stock plantlets.”
Another YIIFSWA Seed System Specialist, Dr Lava Kumar said the high ratio propagation technologies for rapid multiplication of high-quality early generation seed were being used to produce mother plants (breeder seed) for foundation seed yam production.
He noted that the YIISFWA project had successfully promoted and introduced the high ratio propagation technologies for seed yam production in Nigeria and Ghana.
Ridwan Fasasi
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