Crop scientists in Ghana grow “seed yams in the air”

Seeds constitute about 25 percent of the cost of yam production in Ghana and other African countries.

Local farmers are denied the benefits of their harvests as, traditionally, they will save about 25 percent of their yam harvest for the next planting season.

Access to good quality planting materials is therefore a major limiting factor to the expansion of yam cultivation in Ghana, says Dr. Emmanuel Otoo, a Yam Breeder.

“Once you tackle and you are able to take away that limitation posed by the seed system, the sky is the limit,” he noted.

Ghana is the world's second-largest yam producer after Nigeria. However, yam production is declining in some traditional producing areas due to declining soil fertility, increasing pest pressures and the high cost of labor.

Researchers at the Crops Research Institute (CRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) want to shift from saved seed yams to growing seed yams in the air, using aeroponics technology.

“Normally people don’t plant yams with the vines, so we realized that we can do that and actually increase the multiplication ratio from 1 to 240 and now what we are doing is aeroponics, the first of its kind in the country; we’ve planted yam vines not in the soil, [but] hanging in the air, gave them nutrients and they’ve started bulking,” said Dr. Otoo, who heads of the Yam Programme at the CRI-CSIR.

According to him, one plant can yield about 1,000 seeds and “with this technology you can plug the yam seed like you are picking pepper”.

The Aeroponics System (AS) is the process of growing plants in an air or mist environment without the use of soil – the novelty is for rapid multiplication of clean seed yam tubers in large quantities by directly planting vine cuttings in AS boxes to produce mini-tubers in the air.

Some selected farmers have been engaged by the researchers to appreciate the system whilst having hands-on-training on yam seed propagation techniques.

One of such farmers is 56-year old Kwasi Benyado, from Atebubu, a predominantly yam producing community.

“There are times you run-out of yam seeds and you have to buy but with what we’ve learnt here, we can nurse our own seeds to save money,” he said.

The new system is being promoted to the farmers and commercial seed producers, who would have the benefit of generating “true-to-type” planting materials.

Research Scientist, Patricia Oteng Darko, is excited to be working on the project.

“Aeroponics doesn’t demand so much space…with an enclosed system like this you’re sure to eliminate the diseases and then you get a lot out of a small space,” she said.

The yam producers have also identified access to water as another challenge in production.

“Definitely it’s a matter of climate change; we know that the rains are not coming in time and they come in quantities that you don’t expect them to, so we are trying to develop materials that can tolerate such conditions,” said Dr. Otoo.

The yam seed developing systems is funded under the West African Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP) and also supported the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh 

Community Action for Yam Seed Project to increase food security in Ghana and Nigeria

Smallholder farmers in Ghana and Nigeria are being supported to improve on the quality of saved seed yam for higher productivity.

The Community Action for Yam Seed (CAY-SEED) Project is aimed at increasing food security and wealth creation by addressing some of the major limitations to yam production.

The three-year project is targeted at improving the quality and productivity of 3,000 smallholder farmers through innovative agricultural interventions in eight major yam growing communities in Ghana and Nigeria.

It is being implemented by the Crops Research Institute (CRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and partners, with a $3.5million funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – the CSIR-CRI is making $0.5million additional in-kind contribution.

Seeds are key component in the drive for food security and sustainability, especially in these times of climate change and its impact in agricultural production. Availability of yam seed constitutes as much as 50% of total cost of yam production.

“Coupled with this is the poor quality of available seed yam; damage from nematodes, viruses, tuber rots and bacterial infections are major contributions to the poor seed quality and yield reductions in yam,” observed Dr. Stella Ennin, Project Leader and Director of the CSIR-CRI. “This partnership intervention is therefore vital to raise the level of seed yam production in Nigeria, which is the lead producer of yam in the world, and Ghana, which is the leading exporter of yam in the world”.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) considers the CAY-SEED grant as a “critical investment”.

“We identified seed systems as one of the primary constraints across cassava, sweet potatoes, bananas and yam; all the crops that we invest in,” noted Claire Kpaka, an Associate Program Officer at the Foundation. “For us, we see CAY-SEED as an important opportunity to demonstrate to farmers the best practices in maintaining clean seed at their own farm level.”

Whilst commending development partners for the support for agricultural development, Dr. Ennin pleaded with the Ghanaian and African governments “to provide the needed support to agricultural research and development to realize African government’s vision as enshrined in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), of making agriculture the vehicle for economic transformation on the continent”.

Ashanti Regional Minister, Samuel Sarpong, addressing the project launch, acknowledged it is only through research that problems of low crop yield would be addressed.

According to him, the government of Ghana with the support of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Bank is making significant strides in addressing the challenges faced by research into the crop.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh