Vdeo: Development of Drought and Flood resistant rice -by BMF

Banana Diseases in Kagera: Lumpsum solutions will not help our farmers

Kagera has a rich diversity of banana varieties and is the largest producer of the best type of banana to serve of types of utilization purposes. There are varieties for cooking only (Ebitoke), there are varieties for roasting only (Enkojwa, Echitegombwa), there are varieites for eating as fruits (Enjoge, Akanana) when ripe and there are varieties for making juices (Omulamba) and local beer (Olubisi) from Embile type of varieities. In each of these categories there various types of used for special occassion by special people.

But all these traditions soon will be history, the number of diseases in banana in all district has increased tremednously and threaten to whipe out banana in a shortest time possible. These days where ever you go banana diseases has become a talk of the day throughout the year. To some this is time for making money from donors in the name of saving banana farmers without taking care of the future of banana industry and contribution to the traditions of Kagera people.

Most of the efforts is now being directed at introducing new varieties that are believed to be tolerant to the suspected diseases and promoting them at any cost. Most of the organizations involved have no people with expertize in the Banana diseses or banana management (a Breeder or Pathologist)and are new to banana management tradition that has maintained these varieties for years in Kagera.

Currentlly, efforts concentrate on introducing a single type of variety especially Mutwishe in the whole of Kagera. This will be a major blow in the future should another disease that affect that particular variety reach the area.

Where have our breeders gone?

As I said earlier Kagera has a the largest banana diversity ever known in this country. By concentrating on introductions makes me think of two things. First we have no breeders to specialize in bananas grown in Kagera or theose available have less interest and less concerned with the genetic errosion we are currently creating. Second there is no serious funding that is aware of the importnace of maintaining the diversity and its role in disease management. Third, our research is donor driven and most effort is on the number of new planting materilas one have managed to raise in the nursery and distribute to farmers rather than finding the soution of improving resistance to existing materials (germplasm) i.e. efforts to find local banana varieties that have genes with with resistance to major diseases which I believe exists.

Lack of genetic improvement and research on Local varieties coupled with poor understanding of best bet traditional banana management have led to intensifying the problem in areas it never existed before. these introduction of ppalting materials by NGOs carry disease to new areas. Lumpsum solution such as involvement of NGOs in forcing varieties to farmers is killing banana production in Kagera.

what is then needed?

Policy guidelines are needed with regard to distribution of banana planting materials, Socio economists should try to understand what is happening to the traditional ways of banana production, breeders should be concernded with maitaining and utilizing the diversity to control the diseases. The government and well wishers of Kagera should make effort to fund genetic improvemnt and disease control. The growing market of bananas from Kagera (Ndizi Bukoba) should be the catalyst for investing in local banana improvement.

..........We can have no complement to the banana I have known for decades and I am not convinced that we can make changes from the existing germplasm.

Advice to Tanzania on Kilimo Kwanza

DAR ES SALAAM: A visiting professor has faulted Tanzanian government policies and some reforms aimed at turning around agriculture in the country. He says both, which aim to make agriculture become the main engine of economic growth and poverty alleviation among the poor rural masses, are either off the track or too insufficient to attain the results expected. Prof Hans Binswanger from Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria said the government would need to act swiftly on investment policies, those on governance and other barriers to the promotion of agriculture. The South African scholar was commenting at a major research conference in Dar es Salaam on agricultural sector development and the ‘Kilimo Kwanza’ policy for green revolution.


Available at: CAADP e-Alert Issue 01 | Wednesday, 7 April 2010

Rain-making to Fishing experts from Vietnum: Disregard of our brilliance

Tanzania is known for its quick adoption and re-adoption without evaluation of past experience, this partly comes from our life long tradition of not reading. Our culture of hating to read makes us one of the leading country in thinking we have made discovery of what has been in shelves for centuries. It is often said that if you want to hide knowledge to a Tanzanian just put it in books because we lack the culture of reading. A couple of years when the then Prime minister visited Vietnum came back with the Idea of Inviting rain making experts to help us with the setting up the facilities to for rain business. The supposed invitation was hopefully mean to cost Tanzanians taxpayers huge costs for something that would have ended up in total failure. Thank God the project aborted in a dramatic fashion. After all Tanzania has no critical rain shortage as is Mali Kenya Namibia and some West African countris yet still investing rainmaking have never clicked in their minds. The Idea and technology of rain making in Africa in not new. CTA had published several articles about seeding specific type of clouds with ions which in turn form rains. It has been tried out in countries such as South Africa, Zimbabwe and some west African countries in the past fifteen or so years and found to be too costly but also uncontrollable due to preferences in certain type of clouds. This time around we have other fishing experts coming from Vietnum. The suppose of the new invitation aims at providing expertise to Tanzania in developing the Fishing industry. The bad thing is that what these people are coming to teach or introduce to us in not new. But they will end up being paid huge salaries that could Sustain the Institute for at least Several Months. We have brilliant experts at Mbegan Fishing training institute who are just being undermined by lack of proper funding. If our need is expertise we should send our own people to be trained in Vietnum because Teaching somebody a skill will make him or her independent. My advice to the top brass and the would be top is to throw the challenge to our scientists and researchers. Let us debate of what is keeping us where we are and why are we not moving. But also let us be ready to listen and enable our experts to deliver for I believe that we have the people who are just short of funds but have brilliant ideas that can move us from here to one of the leading economies in East and Southern Africa...... Yes ......we Can.

Ideas from the feld: Balanced Diet for the Poor: Vitamin A -rich maize

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v42/n4/full/ng.551.html

Balanced Diet for the Poor: Vitamin A -rich maize

Maize is a staple food to the majority of the poor, but lack of capacity to purchase nutrient or obtain from direct sources such as legumes and fruits, means their dishes are short of other nutrients such as vitamins and some proteins. However this problem could soon be hisotry due to the discovery of a new strains of maize that could cut vitamin A deficiency among people in developing countries. Developed using traditional breeding methods, the vitamin-fortified maize could be introduced instead of maize modified by genetic engineering, a process that continues to face objections. A New report in this week in Nature Genetics (22 March) that Scientist at HarvestPlus have identified rare variations of a gene known as crtRB1, which occur only in maize plants from temperate regions. These result in much higher production — up to 18 fold — of beta-carotene, the precursor and main source of dietary vitamin A. Using natural plant breeding, the researchers have now introduced these variations into tropical maize strains that are commonly grown in developing countries. Although the research is still at initial stage, it is a break-through which will soon help poor families to meet some level of dietary requirements at a cheaper price. full document can be viewed at http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v42/n4/full/ng.551.html)

EL NINO ON PAPERS can we be more precise??

Last year we were expecting heavy rains, this was according to our meteorological department. To be precise warning report by the Boss came out early than the usual character of predicting what has already happenned. For those of us who were keen to know how the weather would behave at the time of planting, this was a releif for we were aware of what were to happen. "...............Heavy rains... in the name of El-nino...." ....So in East Africa we were expecting El-nino and it was to begin late in October. With our Knowledge of what happened in 1997/98 particularly in Tanzania due to el-nino, this time people were determined to make use of the rain. But interestingly this time around we have seen contrary to what was said. The rains falling below average has been a common feature. Anyway this could be because these were short rains which could have beeover estimated. But very rery cecently we also received a report that the long rains will be above average. The announcement came out immediately after the first heavy rains that covered the whole country. Since then several parts of the country have not received rains for sometime contraray to what was forecasted. At times one wonders whether Met. people have the right people and the wrong equipments or the right equipments and the wrong people. Apart from sun-set and sunrise prediction I have never seen them make the correct prediction. As an agricultural country whatever happens at Met departments affects us directly, it is equally important to make sure that we have the right tools and equipments also people to read and come out with the right recommendations rather than predicting what is not.... thus making the wrong judgement and misleading our people and their livelihood.