By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA – AS food prices remain high, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, IITA, Wednesday, disclosed boosting yam farmers productivity with a new innovation called the Programme for Seed System Innovation for Vegetatively-Propagated Crops in Africa, PROSSIVA.

The Head of Station, IITA, Kubwa, Abuja, and Yam Seed System Specialist, Dr Beatrice Aighewi, speaking on the sidelines of the ‘Open Day to Promote the Yam Leaf-Bud Cuttings and Mini-tuber Technologies for Seed Production’, for yam producers, said it became imperative to ensure farmers access certified yam seeds due to the high yield that comes from it.

According to Aighewi, to cover a hectare to plant yam for consumption, about 10,000 seeds are needed to cover for when planting the yam to eat, as it could be increased further, with about 500,000 plants for a hectare coming from the technology.

The PROSSIVA Method and engaging local communities give farmers a sense of ownership and commitment, therefore, it motivates them to actively participate in the promotion of food production and making profits.

To ensure farmers receive only top-quality and disease-free seed yams, IITA has devised new technological certification methods. The mini set technique involves cultivating seed yams from tiny, disease-free yam sets (tubers). This method generates superior planting material while successfully halting the spread of diseases.

She said: “We have a lot of innovations that we have come up with in regards to all of these crops but yam is of particular interest because yam seed has always been a great challenge. Many farmers spend so much to buy seeds. Five years ago, it cost between N750,000 to N1 million to buy seed to plant one hectare. So that cost must have really increased today. But many farmers, because they keep their own seeds, don’t know the cost of that seed.

“We came up to do research on how to improve the quality of seed, and now we have discovered that we can use even the stems of the plants, we call it vines because it is twining, we can use it to produce seed.

“And the idea behind it is just that we had to clean it of all those diseases that have accumulated over the years. Once it is clean, then the potential of the yam can fully come out. So from that stem cutting, just a tiny bit of stem with one leaf, we plant it and we get sufficient planting materials.

“So the rate of multiplication now of that yam is similar to that of maize because from one grain of maize you can get 300 seeds. From yam, from one gram of seed that we plant, we can also get 300 and even with a bigger tuber accompanying it.”

Meanwhile, for farmers to access the technology she said, “Our idea is to make it affordable and available that is why we want to train as many people as possible, so that if in any community you have somebody who knows how to link to the seed company because right now we have trained seed companies but there are still very few. They will link up to the seed company and get that improved variety. Produce it and sell it in their community.

“With what we are doing now, Nigeria is also the first. For now, this technology that we are showcasing, it has been done only in Nigeria and Ghana. Because Ghana comes number two in yam production after Nigeria. But they are far number two.

“Nigeria is producing almost 70 per cent of the world’s yam. So the remaining 30 per cent is produced by all the other countries together. So we are starting with Nigeria and our push is very much in Nigeria because the demand is so high. We are producing now, we are not exporting but Ghana is number one in the export. So we want Nigeria to be able to produce so that we can meet the local demand and also export.”

Meanwhile, an agronomist working on PROSSIVA, Dr Daniel Aihebhoria, explained that the essence of the Open Day was basically to, “To showcase our PROSSIVA technology on how the vegetatively propagated crops are being multiplied, propagated easily, and our main focus for today is the yam seed, how we get the yam seed, using the rapid multiplication technology which includes the leaf-bud cuttings that is when you cut the growing yam leaves with the stem along with it, which is the bud, so it is called the leaf bud cuttings.

“By doing so, they will be able to maximize productivity per unit area and increase their volume of production and also their income generation capacity from just one hectare.”