The National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC) has warned that it would punish producers of agricultural seeds that do not meet the required standards in the country.
Director General of NASC, Dr.Philip Ojo gave the warning on Friday in Lokoja, during a three-day training workshop for proposed Licensed Seed Inspectors (LSI) under basic third party certification.
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He said the council has began collaboration with major implementation partner, Bill and Melinda Gates for an economically sustainable integrated cassava system which started in 2016 to develop cassava seed value chain for Nigeria.
He noted that the implementing partners of the Phase 1 project which include the National Agricultural Seed Council (NASC), National Root Crops Research Institute NRCRI, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Context Global Development, (CGD), Fera Science Ltd and International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), was aimed at developing virus-free seeds and seed tracking devices for efficiency and digitisation of cassava seed certification.
The DG said based on the success of the first phase of the programme, the donor agency was satisfied with the feedback which prompted the approval for the second phase which was launched in June this year.