NAN-AE-6
Cassava
By Chidinma Ewunonu-Aluko
Ibadan, March14, 2017 (NAN) Experts in agriculture have begun work to shorten cassava crop breeding cycle in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This was disclosed at the 2017 Annual General Meeting of “Next Generation Cassava Breeding Project’’ held at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan on Tuesday.
The Project’s Principal Investigator, Dr Ronnie Coffman said since 2012, the project had been using a breeding approach known as Genomic Selection (GS) to improve cassava productivity.
“Cassava is a clonally propagated crop, which is difficult. New varieties with enhanced productivity and nutritional traits typically take up to 10 years to develop.
“Scientists on the NextGen project on cassava are focused on giving breeders in Africa access to the most advanced plant breeding technologies to improve varieties to farmers more rapidly,” he said.
Coffman said Genomic selection shortens breeding cycles, and provided more accurate evaluation at the seedling stage.
He said this could also give plant breeders the ability to evaluate larger number of clones without the need to plant them in the target environment.
He also emphasised that using genomic selection, new released cassava stems could be ready in as little as six years.
“The best clones from NextGen Cassava genomic selection efforts are in Uniform Yield Trials this year, and are due to be released to farmers in the next two years,” he said.
According to Coffman, the project is working to identify possibilities to improve flowering in cassava, and understand roles of different gender groups in the development of new varieties.
“NextGen has been working not only to improve the next generation of cassava, but to educate the next generation of cassava breeders.
“The project is now in a transition stage, bridging phase 1 of development and testing of the technologies and that of phase 11, then implementing the products of accelerated breeding of end-users preferred varieties.
“This meeting will seek to review the progress made from inception of the project till now and flesh out future plans for phase 11.
“The five-year project, led by Cornell University, works with 10 institutional partners across six countries on three continents, including Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI/USA), Embrapa (Brazil), and International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT/Colombia).
He listed other partners to include International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA/Nigeria), National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI/Uganda), National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI/Nigeria), and University of Hawaii (USA) among others.
The principal investigator commended Bill Gate and the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom (DFID) for funding the 25 million dollars.
Also speaking, the IITA Director of Cassava Breeding and Varieties of Change, Dr Alfred Dixon said Africa needed to develop and adapt technologies for potential new markets to accommodate cassava growth.
Dixon stressed the need for breeders to consider several key traits while doing breeding to achieve the set goal.
“There is the need to increase the shelf life of cassava after harvesting; consumer preference should be key in breeding new varieties,” he said.
Earlier, the IITA Deputy Director-General, Dr Ken Henshaw said cassava was a staple crop central to food security and livelihoods across Africa, stressing that about 500 million people consume it daily in Africa.
He commended the project partners for their vision, adding that no other crop would have been preferred to achieve their aim other than cassava.
Henshaw also pledged that IITA would continue to support the project. (NAN)
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Edited by Cecilia Odey/Ese E. Ekama