By Philip Tengzu
Varempere, (UW/R), Nov. 07, GNA – Some farmers in the Upper West Region have welcomed two improved cowpea varieties in anticipation of commercialising them for cultivation to transform their economic fortunes through enhanced agriculture.
The new varieties were Awudu-Benga and Kanton-Bongdaa, which are not only high in nutrients such as iron, calcium, zinc and total sugar but also high-yielding and drought-tolerant.
The farmers from the Wa West, Sissala East and Sissala West Districts were introduced to these improved varieties during a farmers’ field day at the cowpea demonstration fields at Varempere and Diesi communities in the Wa West District, Chingchang and Silbelle communities in the Sissala East and Sissala West Districts respectively.
They were particularly enthused about the drought-tolerant and high-yielding features of the new varieties as they would reduce the impact of the climate crisis on their farming.
Ms. Doris Kuuduuna, a farmer from Varempere, said she was happy about the good yield of the cowpea despite the poor rainfall.
“I have seen that these two varieties are different from what I have been cultivating over the years, they yield more than the one I have on my farm, so this is what I will be cultivating in the future,” she stated.
Mr. Patrick Yawe Dong, also a farmer from Vieri, acknowledged that the new varieties were better than the varieties he cultivated.
The Savanna Agricultural Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-SARI) established the demonstration farms under the “Scale-Up of Legume Systems Innovation Lab-Developed New Cowpea Variety Releases in Ghana” project.
It was funded by the Legume Systems Innovation Lab under the USAID Feed the Future in Michigan State University. Another partner on the project is the University of California Riverside (UCR).
Addressing the farmers at Varempere on behalf of Dr. Francis Kusi, the Director of CSIR-SARI and Principal Investigator on the project, Mr. Godwin Opoku, an Assistant Research Scientist at the CSIR-SARI, Wa station, encouraged farmers to adopt the new varieties when commercialised to enhance their income levels.
“These two new varieties are going to improve the health of farmers, and it is going to give you more money because they are high yielding,” he stated.
He said the Awudu-Benga and Kanton-Bongdaa had potential grain yields of 2.52 and 2.62 tons per hectare respectively, which were relatively higher than those of the most popular cowpea varieties, Wang-Kae and Kirkhouse-Benga, which had 2.4 tons per hectare grain yields.
In addition, the new varieties had large seed size, high resistance to aphis craccivora and macrophomina, and moderate tolerance to striga gesnerioides.
Their pods positioned above the canopy also made it easy to harvest both manually and mechanically.
Awudu-Benga also had an early maturing period of between 65-70 days while Kanton-Bongdaa had a maturity period of between 66-70 days and short cooking time.
Mr. Opoku said the project would commercialise the new cowpea varieties through multiplication of the pre-breeder nucleus seeds under screen house protection and multiplication of breeder seeds and production of foundation seeds.
He added that the breeder and foundation seed stocks would be genotyped with single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers for quality control of seed purity.
GNA