‘How AATF stewardship programme can help curb seed adulteration’

Francis Nwankwo, the Programme Officer of African Agriculture Technology Foundation (AATF), West Africa, speaks about the importance of stewardship programme in ensuring that right quality of PBR cowpea seeds get to the farmers. He also highlights some of the steps taken by AATF to ensure the sustainability of the stewardship programme in the future. COLLINS NNABUIFE brings excerpt.

With the level PBR cowpea is at now, how does stewardship come in?

This new technology, like many other technologies, needs to be managed. If you don’t manage it properly, the benefits that they are supposed to give will elude the farmers.

Stewardship simply refers to the responsible management of a product and it’s not only applicable to Genetically Modified products or biotechnology-based products, it is for any technology whatsoever that farmers are using. If they are not managed properly, it will not give the maximum benefits. Stewardship enhances product durability and sustainability and involves some dos and don’ts which are often summarised in the Technology-Use Guide (TUG).

It’s just like there are sometimes you go to the hospital and they give you a medication and advise you to avoid something that has vitamin C, because the vitamin C may interfere with the pathway the medication follows; so the pharmacist will tell you to take the medication with something that doesn’t have vitamin C. In this case, the pharmacist fulfils their stewardship responsibility by advising the patient on the best way to make the medication effective, while the patient does their part by sticking to the instruction.

So, stewardship works in two ways, it is good for the integrity of the people who developed the technology, because if the technology doesn’t work, the farmers will complain, then on the part of the farmers, it is also good for them to get maximum benefit, and it is the adherence to the stewardship guidelines that enables sustainable benefits from the product.

So, on the part of the developers of the technology, it enhances their integrity, on the part of the farmers, it makes their technology to produce maximally in their fields.

In a nutshell, stewardship is just about responsible management of the product. It begins from the time it is being developed in the laboratory to the field by the scientists, and then goes to the seed companies who produce the seed and to the farmers who grow the seeds. For the insect-resistant beans that has just been released, stewardship involves managing quality, ensuring trait purity, certifying the various classes of seeds, complying with the Insect Resistance Management (IRM) and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) protocols, and continuous monitoring.

Everybody on the product chain have responsibility to maintain stewardship.

For example, with vaccines, sometimes you see people moving around to vaccinate for polio or any other disease, if you notice, they carry vaccines in a bag that has an ice pack in it because those vaccines cannot survive if the cold chain is broken.

Now, if the cold chain is broken at any point, it means the organisms in the vaccine will die, even if you receive the vaccination, it is not going to work, so to make it viable, you have to maintain the cold chain from the place of production until the time it enters into the body of the receiver. So, the entire process of maintaining that cold chain is what is called stewardship.

Do we really need to add another burden of stewardship to the farmers?

That is a very critical question that people always ask. Now what farmers are already planting, you will see that the production is not good, like cowpea has an average production of 2000kg per hectare. In some places they even get 3000kg per hectare, but how much do we get? Most farmers get between 150kg to 400kg which is far below the average potential yield 2000kg/ha. If you look at it, stewardship is probably not maintained along the product line for even the conventional products.

Now the good thing that this new technology comes with and the way we are just developing as a product that goes to the farmer is that it also comes with those advisory services and then those teaching and learning that makes everybody on the chain to know what they are supposed to do. So, it is not going to add additional burden, but it will add additional knowledge that will help make it work better for the farmers.

How will this stewardship program ensure that seeds are not adulterated?

We are making an arrangement with something that already exist in Nigeria. If you notice, if you buy most antibiotics now in Nigeria, you find out that they have a kind of code that is in the pack, when you scratch it, you can text the number and get an immediate response to know if the product is adulterated or not. Mobile Authentication Service (MAS) scheme will be used as one of the anticounterfeiting strategies to detect adulterated and falsified Pod Borer Resistant (PBR) cowpea seeds

The codes will be encrypted on every authentic seed package so that the farmers can quickly verify their seeds using their mobile phones.

We anticipate that people may package anything and give to farmers in the name of PBR cowpea, so to ensure that farmers get the right quality, we will use that approach, taking advantage of the mobile phone technology and those scratch codes to confirm that the seeds are well certified.

How sustainable will this stewardship program be, given that your organisation is just giving intervention?

Another thing we are trying to do now is that we have had series of discussions with the extension system in Nigeria. We are trying to mainstream this stewardship approach into the extension system and we are working with the National Agricultural Extension Research and Liaison Services (NAERLS). We have had series of discussions with them and in couple of months we will begin to train all extension agents in Nigeria basically for this PBR cowpea, but of course the same principle can be applied to any other crop in Nigeria. The most important thing is for the extension system to understand what needs to be done, which they can now apply to any other thing, but of course this project is on beans, that is how we want to mainstream it even if AATF goes out at some point, it is already part of the system because the product is developed for Nigeria and Nigeria has to take ownership. So, at some point, AATF will exit, and Nigeria will continue to do the thing. That is the whole essence for the sustainability.

5 GM crops that would boost Nigeria’s agriculture currently undergoing CFT

After the commercialization of the BT cotton and the Pod Borer Resistant (PBR) Cowpea, Nigeria is expecting some Genetically Modified crops that would enhance the nutritional needs of the country.

These crops are currently undergoing Confined Field Trial (CFT) in various locations across the country.

Some of the crops were also developed to address post-harvest losses, thereby elongating the shelf life of the crops and many more.

The Country Coordinator, Open Forum on Agriculture Biotechnology, Dr Rose Gidado gave insight on some of the GM crops being expected in Nigeria in years to come.

She said “we have so many crops in view but they would all come one after the other because it is a very holistic process developing and coming out with safe and wholesome GM crops.

Cassava

Dr Gidado said there is the GM cassava which is developed by International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Ibadan, and it is for shelf life elongation for the tuber.

“You know cassava has this problem of perishability. Once you harvest, if you don’t process within the next few days it becomes useless, and that is a big challenge to the farmers.

“So that is why scientists usually the look at crops and see which problem is more debilitating and they work against that. And the first thing to do to remedy the situation in cassava is to lengthen the shelf life so that the farmers can harvest and it will stay one month. They can dispose it at their own time, so that is why IITA went in for that and it is gene edited.

“Now it is still undergoing Confined Field Trials and I don’t know when the trials would be completed, but it is doing well, I think in the next few years it can be approved for commercialization. So, that is what we are waiting for. Because it is gene edited, I don’t think it needs to go through those hurdles other crops go through.

“Once we have a cassava with longer shelf life, I think we are good to go, the business will boom better”, she noted.

Rice

She said a GM rice variety is currently being developed at the National Cereals Research Institute, Badeggi. This rice variety was being developed to withstand drought, excessive salt in the soil and other issues.

“We also have the Nitrogen Efficient Water Efficient, Salt Tolerant (NEWEST) rice which is also being worked upon by the National Cereals Research Institute (NCRI), Badeggi. We are in the second year of trial and it is still going on, the efficacy of the gene has been established. It has three traits, the water use, which means drought tolerant, and the Nitrogen use efficiency which means less use of fertiliser and the salt tolerant. I think salt has a big problem of saline soil, I think it reduces its productivity, but this one has been developed in such way that even if the soil has problem of saline, it maximizes the uptake, it helps it take the required amount from the soil that it needs. Even if the soil is highly saline, the rice will not be affected. That will be a great advantage to the farmer.

“In terms of the Nitrogen use efficiency, it also reduces the use of fertiliser, so that the little fertiliser that is applied, it makes good use of it.

“The water efficiency  is of course drought tolerant, you know rice most of the time is a rain fed crop, we have to cultivate it in a marshy area where is water logging. But this one is being developed to be able to withstand drought conditions, so you can do upland farming with it. That is only in the pipeline, it is still expected that one day it will come out with a safe and wholesome commercial rice which I know will help Nigeria because rice is our staple food”, she noted.

Sorghum

According to Dr Gidado,  “we have the African Biofortified Sorghum (ABS) which is developed to have more nutrient, enhanced level of Vitamin A Iron and Zinc to help curb malnutrition in children between the ages of 1 and 4, so this grain can be used as a weaning food and it is very good.

“Also, not just iron and Zinc elevation, but also protein digestibility is being looked at in the ABS. It is an African led project by Africa Harvest Biotechnology Foundation International, based in Kenya. This project is being developed in Nigeria and Kenya; it was 3 countries but I think Burkina Faso is a little out of it, but Kenya and Nigeria are keeping pace in the project. We ran out of fund but then there is a refocus on it again by donors. I think by middle of this year, we should have funding for this ABS because it very helpful and useful project.

“Protein digestibility has been identified as one of the problems with Sorghum. When you cook Sorghum and eat, it does not get digested on time. So, the project has been developed such that the protein digestibility will be there, you can eat it and digest it fast. The indigestibility I think it is due to some anti-nutritional factors.

Virus Resistant Cassava

Dr Gidado said the Virca Plus Virus Resistant Cassava was developed to fight the mosaic virus disease and the cassava brown streak disease. A Confined Field Trial is currently ongoing at National Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike.

“Another thing coming on is the Virca Plus virus resistant cassava, not just virus resistant, the cassava would also have enhanced nutrition, that is Vitamin A, iron zinc would be added to it in addition to the resistance of the mosaic disease.

“We have the cassava brown streak disease and we have the mosaic virus disease which I know is very prevalent in West Africa, but the brown streak is only in East Africa, so the project is actually for East Africa and West Africa. It is just coming into West Africa and Nigeria, but it has developed and worked in East Africa, and the efficacy of the gene has been tested and it is fine.

“The Confined Field Trial has started at National Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike and the trials will run for some years and I think at the end we are going to have a virus resistant cassava with higher nutrition.

“It will help to curb malnutrition, and it will help eliminate the mosaic disease virus. So, it is for nutrition and it is for disease resistance and it will really raise the quality of cassava”, she noted.

Maize

“We have also the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) which was developed for drought tolerance. The Confined Field Trials haven’t started yet, approval has been given by the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) to do Confined Field Trial in this project, and usually it run for 4 to 5 years after which the regulation starts”, Dr Gidado added.