By Francis Kwabena Cofie
Koforidua, July 01, GNA – In a conscious effort to boost food production and nutrition security and provide resilience against climate change, a one-day intensive training on sustainable on-farm conservation of neglected and underutilized root and tuber crops has been held for farmers.
The training is under the concept of Community Seed Banking (CSB) project for 35 selected farmers drawn from Adawso, Mangoase and Tinkon in the Akuapem North District of the Eastern Region.
It was organized by NUS Network Ghana under a pilot project supported by the Agricultural Consular Department of the Netherlands Embassy and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).
The rationale was for the farmers to conserve underutilized root and tuber crops in their farms in order that the crop species would not be lost so as to sustain their provision of food and nutritional needs to society.
They were taken through sustainable production and conservation of key root and tuber crops including cassava, plantain, yam, sweet potato, taro, cocoyam, and tiger nuts.
They were also informed on challenges of on-farm conservation of crop varieties and measures to overcome them.
Dr Daniel Nyadanu, Coordinator of NUS Network Ghana, in interaction with the media, said on-farm conservation was the sustainable management of genetic diversity of locally developed traditional crop varieties by farmers in horticultural or agri-silvicultural cultivation systems known as “in-situ conservation.”
He indicated that if farmers are able to undertake on-farm conservation of their crop species, it would create diversity of crops in the ecology of Akuapem North District, and this would help promote food security.
He said: “By this process erosion of these genetic resources from our agricultural landscapes would be avoided to a greater extent, and that by this practice, farmers could adopt methods to keep varieties of crops that they have selected in their local environments.
“The process helps to maintain the diversity within a particular locality thereby helping to stabilize the food system for our general good.”
Dr Nyadanu emphasized the importance of the on-farm conservation and management of root and tuber crops to food security since they could not be conserved in a seed bank or structure, hence the need to conserve them on the farm in their natural environment in a local area under a CSB procedure.
He said the training was timely in view of the prevailing trend of climate change scenarios and its negative consequences on agricultural productivity.
Dr Nyadanu stated that the programme would be upscaled to other districts and regions in Ghana in due course to help achieve a broader objective of national food and nutrition security.
Dr Richard Adu Amoah, resource person and a member of NUS Network Ghana said sweet potato was a versatile and important crop for food security, since its storage root have a high dietary fiber, minerals, vitamins, and antioxidant compounds.
He said on-farm conservation of sweet potato has been recognized as a strategy to ensure greater accessibility to genetic diversity of traditional crop varieties, lower their conservation costs, reduce vulnerability to their losses and allow their sustainable management.
Mr. Prince Pobee, a member of NUS Network Ghana said a number of indigenous plant species have been lost due to lack of their conservation, underutilisation and mismanagement.
He said though establishment of a community seed bank was commendable, it was necessary to undertake activities that would help farmers know modalities for conserving varieties of their crops especially root and tuber crops on-farm.
Elder Emmanuel Martey, the District Best Farmer for Akwapem North commended the organizers of the workshop, saying that it has bridged their knowledge gap towards sustainable conservation of crop varieties on-farm for higher productivity and profitability.
GNA