IITA gets US$7m approval for commercial products (COMPRO) project
April 30, 2012
The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has received approval of about US$7m from the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation for the implementation of the second phase of the Commercial Products (COMPRO-II) project, says IITA Director General Nteranya Sanginga today.
Tagged as ‘Institutionalization of quality assurance mechanism and dissemination of top quality commercial products to increase crop yields and improve food security of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa,’ the COMPRO-II project aims to institutionalize quality assurance mechanisms and facilitate the rapid dissemination of top quality commercial products to increase yields and improve the food security of smallholder farmers in the region.
“The plan is to raise awareness among over two million smallholder farmers on effective and profitable commercial products by 2016 through public-private partnership,” Sanginga explains.
Of these households, 420,000 will have tested at least one effective commercial product and at least 50 percent of these will have adopted the technology and achieve a 15-30 percent yield increase with substantial impacts on food security and income.
“The key expected outcome of the project is the institutionalization of screening and approval of commercial products,” says Prem Warrior, Senior Program Officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
In the last decade, sub-Saharan Africa has witnessed economic growth amid population increases and rising dem and for food. Consequently, investments in soil fertility have become indispensable to increase agricultural productivity, and access to agricultural inputs is required to achieve this goal.
But more than having access to inputs, quality assurance of agricultural inputs is of utmost importance to protect farmers, retailers, wholesalers, and importers, and to minimize health and environmental hazards.
For instance, new biofertilizers, biopesticides, and chemical agro-inputs have been commercialized, but these products are often insufficiently evaluated for quality and efficacy due to weak national and regional regulatory systems, says Bernard Vanlauwe, IITA’s Director for Natural Resource Management and Central Africa.
In the past three years, scientists working under the first phase of the Commercial Products project, also known as COMPRO I, have identified three effective commercial products out of the over 100 products evaluated that enhance yields by 15-30 percent. These products include Rhizobium inoculants for legumes, mycorrhizal inoculants for bananas, and seed coating of for maize.
“COMPRO-II will leverage on the gains earlier made in phase one, which covered Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria,” says Vanlauwe.
The phase II of the project proposes to:
- transit these technologies into Ghana, Tanzania, and Ug anda,
- institutionalize regulatory and quality control processes,
- disseminate effective products through public-private partnerships,
- develop communication tools, and
- strengthen human capacity.
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