African scholars in crop breeding see fresh opportunities for the continent’s farmers

A woman plants sweet potatoes at her farm in Gatithi Village, Kirinyaga County. Africa has the lowest research capacity in the world, with only 70 researchers per million population compared to 2,640 and 4,380 in the US and Japan respectively. Photo/FILE 

By IPS

In Summary

• Accelerating Africa’s food production has brought more farmland into play, but often without a matching increase in crop yields, a problem scientists blame on climate change, low adaptation of high-yield crop varieties, poor soils and more importantly lack of plant and seed breeders with an intimate knowledge of what Africa needs.
• Established in 2007 to train plant breeders over a 10-year period following a grant from AGRA, West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement is aiming to become the foremost centre for the training of plant breeders for Africa.

For the few plant breeders in Africa like Vivian Oduro, working for an international research institution is an obvious choice, with prestige and benefits any agricultural scientist would find hard to decline.

But Oduro — a sweet potato breeder — is staying put. She will use her expertise in Africa for the farmers with whom she now shares a special bond because she understands their challenges intimately.

A PhD student at the prestigious West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI) in Accra, Ghana, Oduro is part of a group of new thinkers in crop breeding who see fresh opportunities in Africa.

“Working overseas is attractive, but so is Africa when you understand what needs to be done,” Oduro told IPS.

She said her passion for breeding sweet potatoes has led her to develop 30 different strains after consulting smallholder farmers in Ghana.

By end of this year, Oduro anticipates the completion of field trials leading to the development of 50 varieties for multiplication and release to farmers.

“When you handle a crop for a long time, you develop love for it. I call my progenies my babies and would not want to leave this for something else or go elsewhere. My training made me better understand the challenges African farmers face, something I could have missed had I trained elsewhere,” said Oduro.

Accelerating Africa’s food production has brought more farmland into play, but often without a matching increase in crop yields, a problem scientists blame on climate change, low adaptation of high-yield crop varieties, poor soils and more importantly lack of plant and seed breeders with an intimate knowledge of what Africa needs, said Prof Eric Danquah, the director of WACCI.

Established in 2007 to train plant breeders over a 10-year period following a grant from AGRA, WACCI is aiming to become the foremost centre for the training of plant breeders for Africa.

It may not be far from its goal, having made history by graduating eight PhD students in a single discipline — plant breeding — on the same day in July 2013. Currently, 54 students are at various stages of PhD training in plant breeding.

“We need political will to get the training right. We cannot adopt a partisan approach to this because this is too important to toy with. We have for too long paid lip service to agriculture,” said Danquah.

“Our scientists can think like any other plant breeders anywhere in the world and a number of people around the world are looking for collaborators to access grants. Our scientists are there because they are strategic thinkers and team players, and are results-driven.”

Data on the number of plant breeders in Africa is outdated. Ideally, Danquah said, for every crop in every agro-ecological region, a country requires two well-trained plant breeders.

It costs up to $140,000 (Sh12 million) a year to train a plant breeder to PhD level at WACCI, a cost Danquah said has been criticised as too high but is justified in keeping to high standards that produce high-quality scientists.

Foreign institutions