New film from Nigerian yam project
2 December 2010
In June 2010 RIU announced that funding had been made available through the Commissioned Work programme for a project in Nigeria which aimed to make disease-free yam planting material available.
This initiative is collaboration between the Diocesan Development Services of the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture.
The team has recently produced a film showing how the project has evolved and is meeting the challenge of developing farm inputs (planting materials, herbicides and pesticides) and skills - which, according to RIU's crop expert Andy Ward, can lead to a 700% increase in productivity.
In the film Nora McNamara tells how from the mid 1970s farmers' favourite yam varieties started to be struck by soil-borne diseases. This occurred as a result of declining soil fertility. Titilayo Okoye, a farmer from Abuja, says that she finds the combination of better techniques and healthier seed is leading to "yield rates that are higher".
Since 2002, Diocesan Development Services had been working at a small-scale in Kogi State, Nigeria, promoting an improved yam multiplication technique known as the mini-sett approach. This allows more efficient production of large amounts of disease-free planting material. The mini-sett approach was developed through research, including that supported by DFID's Crop Protection Programme.
The film shows how farmers are taught to prepare and plant yam mini-setts.
2 December 2010
In June 2010 RIU announced that funding had been made available through the Commissioned Work programme for a project in Nigeria which aimed to make disease-free yam planting material available.
This initiative is collaboration between the Diocesan Development Services of the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture.
The team has recently produced a film showing how the project has evolved and is meeting the challenge of developing farm inputs (planting materials, herbicides and pesticides) and skills - which, according to RIU's crop expert Andy Ward, can lead to a 700% increase in productivity.
In the film Nora McNamara tells how from the mid 1970s farmers' favourite yam varieties started to be struck by soil-borne diseases. This occurred as a result of declining soil fertility. Titilayo Okoye, a farmer from Abuja, says that she finds the combination of better techniques and healthier seed is leading to "yield rates that are higher".
Since 2002, Diocesan Development Services had been working at a small-scale in Kogi State, Nigeria, promoting an improved yam multiplication technique known as the mini-sett approach. This allows more efficient production of large amounts of disease-free planting material. The mini-sett approach was developed through research, including that supported by DFID's Crop Protection Programme.
The film shows how farmers are taught to prepare and plant yam mini-setts.
| Seed yam project, November 2010 (08:07) |  |
