For many farmers in Nigeria, the absence of improved technologies to make farming easy and smooth, particularly for the younger generation, has been very challenging.
Despite having 16 agricultural research institutions and four conventional universities of agriculture in the country, research and development has been on the slow pace.
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Recently, Daily Trust spoke with Professor Ishiyaku Mohammed, the executive director of the Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR), Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and he explained some of the newest researches and technologies the institute developed for farmers.
Recent varieties released
“In the most recent situation, about 28 different varieties of sorghum were released. About the same number was released for groundnut varieties. The institute also released up to 20 varieties of cowpea and 66 different maize varieties, then 13 different varieties of cotton.
“They have very important economic attributes that increase the income of farmers and provide a different product for utilisation, either as food, fiber, or for making textile products in the case of cotton, or even for providing oil in the case of groundnut and cotton.
“The IAR has also generally awoken the conscience of farmers to the existence of modern agricultural technologies.
Our scientists have, over the years, fabricated machines and tools towards reducing drudgery. For example, there are hand held planters and tractors. And we are in the process of perfecting roll weeders because people have been complaining that farmers still use hand held hoes for weeding. So we have responded by introducing the development of mechanical weeders. We have threshers for maize, beans, sorghum and groundnut.
“Dryers are important when you produce crops when there’s still rainfall, so you need to find a place where you would at least dry them. Drying is also useful in storing products like tomatoes,’’ he stated.
Something new on ginger seed
He continued, “The IAR also delved into an emerging area of science called biotechnology. Our scientists are developing ways of rapidly propagating crops. For example, right now, we have an order to micro-propagate ginger. Production of ginger is determined by how much planting material you have, and the planting material is very expensive, so our scientists have developed ways that inside a bottle you can develop from 1 to 2 inches piece of ginger. You can produce more than 200 plantlets that can be grown in the field.
Right now, we are receiving orders from some farmers who are looking for this. We do it for sugarcane also. This technique helps in propagating disease- free crops, sometimes planting materials can be infected by disease. The more you plant, the more the disease is propagated into others. But these techniques try to purify the materials to be disease-free. So it is called tissue cultural techniques, where the crop is planted inside a bottle and made to proliferate. Each plantlet can now give rise to several plantlets etc.
New technology for bio-fertiliser, irrigation
“Technologies as we develop them go through two stages. The first stage is scientific. Here, scientists get convinced that these techniques have become a technology or a tool of solving a problem, then it will go to the farmers to test themselves. Then based on the opinion of the farmers, it can be propagated further.
“So in the area of the crop varieties I have counted to you in the last few years, we have released varieties of cowpea that is insect-resistant. It is called SAMPEA20T for maize; the same year we released six different varieties of maize with yield potentials of 6-8 tonne per hectare and then in 2020. Three varieties of improved sorghum (sweet sorghum) were released, together with an additional six varieties of maize.
“So in the recent times, this is what we have released. We are about releasing a technology for bio-fertiliser, which is a capsule of some materials that contain some useful microorganisms that can assist in fixing nitrogen, which will benefit the plant in its growth and development as if it had been added with fertiliser.
“We have developed improved techniques for irrigation so that it will reduce wastage of water by farmers,’’ he added.
