Lake Chad Institute targets 1.5m metric tons of wheat in 2 years

Lake Chad Research Institute (LCRI), Maiduguri has revealed that the Federal Government’s Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) initiative has launched a nationwide scaling-up programme for expanding the wheat area from 70,000 hectares to 350,000 which is set to produce over 1.5 million metric tons of wheat in 2017.
This was disclosed by the Executive Director of LCRI, Dr. Oluwasina Gbenga Olabanji, during the pre-season training workshop organised for wheat farmers in Kano State.
According to him, the scaling-up will guarantee 45% to 50% reduction in Nigeria’s unsustainable import burden.
He added that the policy, if sustained, will not only guarantee more income for the Nigerian farmers, but also protect Nigerians from the vagaries of global markets and strengthen national food security.
Dr. Olabanji further revealed that the purpose of the workshop is to train wheat farmers to acquire more knowledge and skill to increase wheat production in the country and also enhance food and nutrition security which will contribute in the reduction of poverty in Nigeria.
“During the past three years, successive multi-locational field testing, evaluation and validation of advance breeding lines have led to the identification of 21 new and best fit improved wheat varieties along with their crop management packages. The purpose of this training is to let wheat farmers in Nigeria understand such new discoveries and also to understand the methods needed for adaptation of such new discoveries,” said Dr. Olabanji.