Council, Research institute working on improved seeds

Council, Research institute working on improved seeds

… Calls for review of seed policy in the country

By Jimoh Babatunde
The Director-General, National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC) , Dr Philip Olusegun Ojo, has disclosed that the council and the Lake Chad Research Institute (LCRI) were working to ensure that improved seeds were made available to farmers.
Speaking during a road show on the effect of fake seeds in Ibadan, Oyo State recently, he said the council is making efforts to improve local cultivation of wheat by making seeds available to farmers.
Ojo said LCRI had produced wheat varieties that could garner more yields per hectare, adding that in line with the plan that a national data base on seed production has been created to support the wheat action plan in order to enhance research and improve productivity.
He said the target states are Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Borno, Zamfara, Kebbi, Plateau, Sokoto, Gombe, Yobe, Adamawa and Katsina.
So far, he said the council had registered 156 seed companies. In addition, he said the council would ensure seed testing, quality control, and certification processes for classes of seeds.
To this end, he said NASC was supporting research partnerships to develop new varieties of wheat, and other staples required to feed the nation.
In line with the seed sector development policy designed to handle seed needs across the country, Ojo said research institutions and the universities had mobilised to take responsibilities for crop breeding.
According to him, there is effort to achieve food self-sufficiency and security with the production of adequate quality and quantity of improved certified seeds.
On fake seeds, he said firms that are caught selling illegal seed will be sanctioned.
A major seeds distributor at the Dugbe market, Ibadan, Mr. Adenitan Solomon said seed dealers are supporting the NASC on the war to curtail the problem of seed adulteration.
Farmers, Solomon said, are encouraged to look out for seeds with the tag of NASC as every seed bag must have a tag from the Council.
The President, Southwest Agro Inputs Dealers Association, Alhaji Akinmade Olayinka, attributed the use of poor quality seed by farmers to lack of awareness on availability of better performing crop varieties that are high yielding, disease and drought tolerant.

Stakeholders say the steps taken so far by the government is capable of improving local production of the commodity this year, local farmers are capable of producing two million tonnes of wheat annually, amounting to about $2 billion. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tomato disease outbreak: Institute appeals for research funding

The National Horticultural Research Institute, Ibadan, has appealed for funding to carry out research and create awareness on the tuta absoluta pest on tomatoes. The Institute’s Head of Vegetable Programme, Dr Olagorite Adetula, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan on Friday that there was an urgent need to tackle the problem to save the economy. Adetula said the institute needed money to do surveillance survey of the pest/damage, ascertain the impact of the damage and proffer solution for eradicating the pest. She appealed to the Federal Government to help the institute get pheromones to lure and trap the pests and distribute to farmers. ``Spraying insecticides is not the best, the pest has high production rate, some of them can escape while spraying it and they will be resistant to the insecticide thereby causing us more cost. ``The pheromones can be used for six to eight weeks before changing it, it is very effective, the pest has short life cycle, wit
Read more

10,000 women farmers to be engaged in ECOWAS rice project – official

Image
 Mr Richard Olafare, the President, Seed Entrepreneurs Association of Nigeria (SEEDAN) says 10,000 women will be engaged in the recently inaugurated Rice Seed Up-Scaling Project. This is contained in a presentation on the project made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday. Olafare said 8,000 youths would also be engaged in the scaling project. According to him, the number of women and youths represented 50 per cent and 40 per cent respectively of the 20,000 farmers that will participate in the project. NAN reports that the project is an initiative of the West Africa Seed Programme (WASP) in support of the ECOWAS Rice Offensive Programme that was inaugurated in 2014. Among other objectives, it is targeting the production of 60,000 metric tonnes of paddy rice for Nigeria by December 2017, using 1,200 certified seeds. The project is being implemented by SEEDAN in collaboration with the West and Central Africa Council for Agricultural Re
Read more

NEGPRO project can create more jobs with inclusion of meat production— Badmus

•Tuns Farm leads food safety, quality system audit The Chairman , Tuns Farms Nigeria, Asiwaju Olatunde Badmus, has disclosed that the proposed one million jobs expected to be created through the National Egg Production Scheme (NEGPRO) can be doubled if extended to meat production. He made this known when a team from the office of the Vice President, Federal Ministries of Agriculture, Health and Education at the company’s headquarters in Osogbo, the Osun state capital recently. Olatunde Badmus, while sharing the company’s experience on chicken inclusion in the Osun state’s school meal program which the company has been handling since the introduction of the school feeding program four years ago, said they can achieve so much more in terms of job creation through meat production “As we speak, six state governors among who are Kebbi and Borno, have signalled their government’s preparedness to look into this and have invited TUNS farm to their states to discuss modalities for
Read more