| New cassava varieties give farmers new hopes | Send to a friend |
| Monday, 05 July 2010 09:26 |
 By Catherine NjugunaWhile cassava farmers in Eastern and Central Africa are in distress from viral cassava diseases sweeping across the region and ravaging the crop, their Zanzibar counterparts are undergoing a quiet relief from four new varieties of disease-resistant and high yielding cassava introduced three years ago. The four varieties, Kizimbani, Mahonda, Kama and Machui, have revived and given the crop a new lease of life, after it was devastated by the two main cassava diseases; brown streak and mosaic, afflicting the region. Mr Haji Saleh, head of the Zanzibar roots and tuber programme under the ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Environment said cassava is a very important staple in the Island, where it comes in second after rice. However, he added, it is first in terms of acreage and production with over 90 per cent of farmers growing the crop. “The crop grows in most of the agro-ecological zones including in the dry parts of the island, where other crops do not perform well,” he said adding that: “So when the diseases hit, there were very devastating effects to the Island’s food security.” The cassava mosaic first appeared in Uganda in the mid-1980s and rapidly spread throughout cassava growing areas of Eastern and Central Africa, through sharing of infected planting materials and by a vector, the white fly. However, efforts by scientists, governments, non-governmental organisations and farmers almost had the situation under control with a lot of awareness education to farmers on ways to curb the spread of the disease, and the development and deployment of disease resistant varieties. Then the cassava brown streak struck. From 2004, the disease which had been around for much longer, but confined to the coastal low altitude areas of Eastern Africa and around Lake Malawi, it started spreading rapidly to mid-altitude areas, which were recovering from effects of the mosaic disease. Mr Haji said the first survey on the cassava brown streak disease was conducted in 1994, in which 20 per cent of the grown cassava shows the symptoms. “In a follow-up survey in 2002, the disease was found everywhere,” he noted saying: “All the local varieties grown by the farmers were susceptible. The farmer and authorities were crying out for help.” In collaboration with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Zanzibar scientists started a breeding programme to develop cassava varieties resistant to the two diseases. Their efforts paid off and in almost a record four-year research, four varieties were released in 2007. According to the IITA’s cassava breeder based in Dar es Salaam, Dr Edward Kanju, they started with screening of 170 breeding lines -different types of cassava that have not been officially released - which they narrowed down to the released four varieties. The research team then started a rapid multiplication programme, working with the farmers in order to spread the new improved varieties in the island and beyond. “We selected pilot areas in each district to help with the multiplication exercise,” Mr Haji said noting: “We trained them on how to grow cassava to get good yields, maintaining soil fertility and on business skills as well.” “They started with 50 farmers in the pilot areas, but the number grew to 80 farmers, growing and selling planting materials of the improved varieties to their neighbours. Among the farmers is Mr Ramadhani Abdalah Ame, a resident of Kianga Village. The 59-year-old father of 10 participated in the on-farm trials for the improved varieties. This is where the farmers help the researchers to select not only the best performing varieties but also those, which also meet their preferences and requirements for various uses of the crops. For instance, for cooking cassava, the farmers look for sweetness, how long it takes to cook, and the final texture. If it is high yielding, but it tastes and feels like wood after cooking, then its acceptance by the farmers will be low. Mr Ame said he gave up on cassava, which was suffering from ‘Kansa ya Mihogo’, (literally meaning ‘cancer of the cassava’), a dry rot in the roots that made the crop useless. “The cassava looked good in the field, but when uprooted you finds that the roots were rotten and useless. All your labour and efforts are for nothing,” he said. He said he was given 40 cuttings of the four new varieties for trials. “At that time, they did not have given names, only numbers. I was amazed at their performance. The tubers were huge, and had no disease. I selected the two out of them, which I liked most. They were later renamed Kizimbani and Machui,” he said. Mr Ame said the sale of cassava roots and planting materials has made a big difference in his life. He has bought two cows, constructed a cowshed and is now constructing a better house using brick and iron sheets. Mr Suleiman John Ndebe, a resident of Machui Village, had also given up on the crop after 10 years of bad harvests, due to the ‘cancer’ and other pests, and diseases such as mealy bug and cassava green mite. He was growing only a little for consumption. He said farmers in his village had tried many varieties but each of them after two to three growing seasons succumbed to the disease. However, the varieties he was given at Kizimbazi research station for testing excited and motivated him to resume growing the crop, a decision he has not regretted. He said his involvement in the project has turned his life around. Farming for him is now a serious business. He estimates that he makes between 50 – 100 per cent profits from his cassava depending on the season, and his income had increased four times more. “Before the training, I did not know agriculture is a business. I did not know whether I made a profit or a loss. Now, I know how much cassava I have planted, how much I have spent on labour and manure, how much I expect to harvest and how much profit I will make. I am now able to save some money in the bank. My income has increased more than four times and my life has become less stressful,” he said. Furthermore, the new varieties are also less labour intensive. “These new varieties have a lot of canopy. So we only weed twice unlike the other local varieties, which we used to weed up to three times and still got nothing,” he recounted. For most farmers in Zanzibar, cassava is a crop for food security. When a farmer is in need of money, he can just uproot and sell some cassava. Though the crop is seasonal, harvested mostly during the rainy season, farmers can plant the cuttings hence it is almost available all year round. Mzee Hamis Mohamad Sharif, 70, a resident of Kinduni Village is also an active farmer who was involved in the participatory variety selection exercise. He said, when he saw the yields of the new cassava varieties, he then stopped everything else he was doing to focus on the crop. “In the traditional varieties, we used to harvest 15 tubers (a 50kg bag full of cassava) per hectare. The new varieties give as much as 40 tubers a hectare. We were trained how to use manure, proper spacing, how to select good planting materials and the best time to plant,” he explained. “The new varieties provide enough for food and surplus for selling. In the last two growing seasons, I have made Sh3.44 million from the sale of the root tubers and planting materials,” he says. Before the introduction of the new varieties, he was growing cassava on less than a quarter of an acre for domestic consumption only. But Noowadays, he has expanded cassava farming to 10 acres and would like to expand even further depending on the availability of the land. “If I got more land, I would expand my cassava farm as I have plenty of planting material,” he noted. He added that majority of the farmers in his village are now growing the improved varieties for commercial purposes. However, as according to Ms Salma Omar Mohamed, a research officer with Kizimbani research station in Zanzibar, there is still along way to go as currently, there were only 10,000 out of a potential of over a million farmers growing the new cassava varieties. Cassava is vegetative propagated crop, grown from stem cuttings. This put out the limits in the production of planting material as a plant can produce so many cuttings, she said. “The distribution of the planting materials has followed a business model. This has excluded some poor farmers who cannot afford to buy the planting materials, thus continued to suffer due to the disease,” Ms Salma said. However, she was thankful for the strides made with funding from donors such as AGRA, which have enabled them to distribute free planting materials to poor farmers under a voucher programme. Ms Salma is hoping for more donor support to enable them spread the improved cassava varieties to all the farmers in the Unguja and in the neighbouring Pemba Island, where the disease is also prevalent and the penetration of the new varieties is even lower. Dr Kanju said hope is also on the way for farmers in Kenya, Tanzania Mainland and Uganda as there are 15 promising cassava varieties suitable for the area’s climatic conditions. “The research is on the last testing stages,” he noted. He expressed optimism that with scientists and farmers working together, the diseases can be eliminated in the region, securing the crop and livelihoods of over 200 million farmers in sub-Saharan Africa who depend on the crop. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
