‘Extension workers to be trained to handle PBR cowpea’

Dr Rose Gidado, the Country Coordinator, Open Forum on Agriculture Biotechnology (OFAB), in this interview by COLLINS NNABUIFE, speaks on the future of PBR cowpea in Nigeria. She also highlights the plans to train extension workers to interface with farmers.

Last year, the commercialisation of PBR cowpea was approved, at what stage are we now?

What is currently happening is seed certification. That’s the next stage by the National Agricultural Seed Council because once the seed certification is done, then seed multiplication will follow to such a level that it will be available to all farmers.

Seed multiplication will be done by both the Institute for Agriculture Research (IAR) and local seed companies that have the capacity for the seed multiplication to ensure that farmers get those quality seeds, because some other people can always come up with adulteration and market them as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) just to discourage the farmers because they will plant and won’t get the desired result. That’s why we really have to take measures, keep on monitoring the stewardship plan that have now been put in place to help follow up and help the farmers with good farm management practices because the technology cannot just work on its own. We know something is there to prevent pest attack, but there is another thing: it is not automatic ticket to productivity. So, you have to engage in good farm management practices.

The gene has taken care of the insects aspect of it, but then, beans is susceptible to other insects. The Maruca is the most ravaging of them all, so the gene takes care of only Maruca and those insects that are in the same family of Maruca, and then those insects outside Maruca, you have to also find a way of managing them, maybe with fewer chemicals. That’s why we have fewer sprays, maybe two sprays, if you were able to do like eight to ten sprays, this time around you can only do two sprays just to take care of other insects that are not within the Maruca insect family.

You have to also do weed management. We have to know the time of planting, then having access to the right quantity of seed that the farmers need.

There are many other things contained in the stewardship plan. All those things have to be followed when planting starts, but now I think we are working towards seed certification and seed multiplication at the same time to ensure that farmers have access to the right seeds.

Are there plans to follow up farmers in the field to further educate the farmers?

We are actually having plans in place, because once these seeds start going out, we need to begin to go to the fields where the farmers are, and we need to also establish contact with the extension workers. The farmers and the extension workers are always together and the farmers understand their language better. They can talk in the local languages.

So, we have to start working closely with the extension workers, but I think first of all, we have to identify those extension workers, bring them close, train them, tell them things about GMOs and how to handle those GM seeds, to plant, maintain, tell them the advantages and the expectations.

So, we have to first of all get those extension workers, train them, build their capacity so that they would do their jobs well with the farmers, so that the farmers will realise that expected output. So, we really have to go out this time around.

Are their plans for another variety of PBR cowpea when it exhausts its life span?

The plan to get another variety has started, to add more genes so that the insects don’t grow resistance on time. Already, approval has been be given for the Confined Field Trial of a new gene into the cowpea, to strengthen the gene, so it is going to have more advantage over this very one that has been released.

Another variety (brown beans), will also be developed. It is in the pipeline. Another thing is weevils, the post harvest challenge. The PBR cowpea takes care of farm, but during post-harvest period, what happens? You know beans, you can’t store it for a long period without any preservative added to it and that is why people put snipers on it to take care of the weevils. So, something is being done; already it has started, a variety of beans would be developed to be resistant to weevil during storage.

So, scientists don’t sleep, research is ongoing, you don’t wait for a problem to emanate before you begin to look for solutions, you go ahead, you work, scientists always work ahead of time, I think all those are in process.