The WEMA Project Manager at the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), Dr Sylvester Oikeh, explaines to COLLINS NNABUIFE, how the new variety of maize can resist attacks from army worms, insects and other weather conditions.
What is WEMA project all about?
WEMA is Water Efficient Maize for Africa project, a public-private partnership which started since 2008, to develop and deploy royalty-free African drought tolerant and insect-pest protected (climate-smart) white maize varieties for small scale farmers in Africa. The project is currently being implemented in six countries in East and Southern Africa including Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa.
Royalty-free means that the technology we are promoting, what makes it to be drought tolerant or what confers insect-pest protection, what scientists call transgene or trait, normally you have to pay for this transgene, that means you will pay for the seed and also pay for the technology or the trait that has been inserted in the seed., But the WEMA project has helped to negotiate for farmers to get the trait or technology free, so farmers do not have to pay extra cost in addition to the cost for the seed, that is what we mean by royalty-fee, said Dr Sylvester Oikeh, WEMA Project Manager at the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF).
Under moderate drought, the WEMA products (varieties) should be able to give us a yield advantage of between 20-35 per cent over the yield of the commercialized varieties that were in the market in 2008 when the project started.
For WEMA, we are using conventional breeding as well as genetic modification (GM) to further enhance the products of the conventional breeding to make them more drought tolerant and protect them against insect-pest such as stem-borers.
To develop drought tolerant maize by conventional breeding method takes a very long number of years, in fact, scientists will tell you that every year, they can increase yield through conventional breeding under drought by just 1-1.5 per cent. This means, to develop and come out with drought tolerant maize variety with yield advantage of about 15 per cent, you need almost 10 year. But by just inserting the transgene that confers drought tolerance to the maize crop you can within few years (2-3 years), have additional yield advantage of 8-14 percent over the conventional drought tolerant version under moderate drought condition.
But for the transgenic maize variety which is the GM product, it requires complying with a set of regulations. It requires approval from regulatory agency such as the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) in Nigeria before it can get to the farmers. ,
So far, farmers in five WEMA countries including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa were a total of more than 90 of the conventional drought tolerant varieties called DroughtTEGO® have been approved are already benefiting from conventional maize varieties and changing the livelihoods particularly in Kenya.
How does transgenic maize work?
The transgenic products have advantage over the conventional products because it takes much longer to develop drought tolerant varieties by conventional method.
But through the use of biotechnology tool, example genetic modification, the transgene such as drought tolerant or insect-pest protection found in soil micro-organisms can be extracted within few years and inserted into the maize crop to make it drought tolerant or to give the crop internal protection against the specific insect-pest (e g, stem-borer) and limit the use of pesticides by farmers. The AATF negotiated for these transgenes from one of the WEMA partner organizations – Monsanto Company, USA who agreed to donate to African farmers royalty-free.
The trials carried out in two countries, Kenya and Uganda for three years showed that maize that received insect-pest protection transgene which scientists called had yield advantage of 52 per cent over similar maize varieties that did not have the Bt transgene in them. This means that the farmer growing the genetically modified version of the WEMA maize variety called TELA (Tela means protection in Latin language) will have an additional 52 bags of maize if the farmer growing the conventional version has 100 bags because of the attack by the insect-pest called stem-borer.
Coincidentally, when the WEMA project partners were carrying out field trials using genetically modified maize varieties that combined both drought tolerance and insect-pest protection transgenes in three countries in 2017, they observed that the maize varieties that had the Bt transgene in them gave good protection against the ravaging Fall Army worm (FAW) insect-pest in all the three countries, although the Bt transgene was meant to give protection against stem-borer insect-pest. The scientists found that on a scale of one to nine, with one as complete control, without any symptom of Fall Army worm attack, and nine being completed succumbed to FAW, the WEMA TELA maize with the Bt had a score of three, while the farmers’ maize had a score greater than six, showing that the WEMA TELA maize variety had some level of protection or potential to control the Fall Army worm insect-pest. This is an interesting finding considering current impact of this pest in Africa including Nigeria
Is there any plan for Nigeria to benefit from WEMA project?
AATF visited the Honorable Minister of Agriculture in Nigeria to let him be aware of this technology and informed him that the partnership is developing another phase of the project which is called the TELA Maize Project that is basically transgenic, and the minister showed interest.
However, in this new project focusing on transgenic maize, before a country will participate, it has to show interest or willingness to participate in the project.
So we urged the Nigerian government to express interest for farmers in Nigeria to also benefit from the technology, by writing a letter that will be presented to the investors showing that there is interest from the government of Nigeria. The whole idea is that the investors want commitment from the participating countries; they don’t want to invest in a country when the government is not committed.
What is the way forward on agriculture using biotechnology?
The truth is that Africa cannot experience the long desired green revolution without the GM technology because most of the challenges facing agriculture today whether drought or pest and diseases can be solved using biotechnology. It is just a tool being used in plant breeding.
Instead of using the conventional method to breed, the breeders are now embracing this technology just to improve the efficiency and expedite the process of breeding or developing new crop varieties.
So it is better to adopt the technology now or we adopt much later when the products will be produced elsewhere and dumped on us. Countries in Africa example Nigeria that has the necessary biosafety regulations to ensure only safe GM products are promoted; need to embrace GM crops for farmers.
Other farmers in different parts of the world are greatly benefiting from the products of GM technology and Nigeria should not be left out.
and then