Ensure food security - Prof Danquah urges ECOWAS countries
The Director of the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI), University of Ghana, Professor Eric Y. Danquah, has urged ECOWAS countries to address the issue of food insecurity through research funding.
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He said the sub-region needed a critical mass of scientists orientated towards working in national breeding programmes, and the private sector in their home countries to develop improved varieties of staple crops needed for food security, sustainability and economic development.
Prof Danquah made the appeal during a presentation at the just ended World Bank Africa Centres of Excellence (ACE) Project meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, which had brought together more than 100 renowned academicians and researchers from the sub-region.
He said food security was a major challenge in West and Central Africa due to a number of constraints, resulting in low breeding capacity, low productivity and a convergence of factors, including high population growth rates, deteriorating soils, land grabs, water scarcity and climate change, which were putting pressure on global food supply systems.
Prof Danquah said from all indications, it was clear that the food insecurity situation was a chronic problem likely to worsen in the coming decades.
He said there was limited human capacity in plant breeding and seed science and technology, adding that the requisite skills and expertise to develop the improved varieties were urgently needed in farmers’ fields.
Prof Danquah, who is also the Team Leader of the WACCI ACE Project, said consequently, the majority of farmers relied on their own varieties, which were low yielding and susceptible to a-biotic and biotic stresses.
He said to contribute towards addressing the apparent shortage of plant breeders in the sub-region; the WACCI was established with initial funding from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa at the University of Ghana to train plant breeders at the PhD level to improve the indigenous crops of the sub-region.
He said plant breeding was widely recognised as a means by which agricultural productivity could be enhanced through the genetic improvement of crops. The director said the centre in 2013 graduated the first batch of eight PhD students, and would be graduating another 10 this year in July, which no university in Africa had done before in plant breeding.
He said an additional 59 students were currently at various stages of PhD training. Prof Danquah observed that the ACE funding would provide the springboard for transforming WACCI into a sustainable African Centre of Excellence for training Plant Breeders and Seed Scientists and
Technologists.
He said it was expected that WACCI would graduate highly qualified, competent and motivated plant breeders, applying the full scope of plant breeding methodologies to develop superior, climate-smart and resilient varieties of the staple crops to increase productivity.
This, Prof Danquah said, could enhance regional food security through the development, multiplication and supply of superior crop varieties and hybrids that met the needs of farmers.
“The WACCI programme addresses not only the brain drain syndrome which is characteristic of training African scientists abroad but also ensures that home trained graduates get a jump-start in their home institutions by continuing their research immediately after graduation,” he stated.