National agricultural researchers in five countries in East and Southern Africa have identified their five best varieties in terms of resistance to Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) and Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) for sharing with one another to speed up efforts to develop varieties with dual resistance to the two diseases.
Twenty-four of these varieties have been successfully cleaned up to remove all viruses and have been sent to each of the countries as tissue culture plantlets for field trials in the areas most affected by the diseases to find out how well they can tolerate or resist the diseases as part of efforts to halt their spread.
This was one of the major milestones of the New cassava varieties and clean seeds to combat CMD and CBSD project (5CP in short) reported at a meeting of its stakeholders to review the project that was held from 16 to 20 June 2014 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The five countries are Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia. 5CP is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Dr Fidelis Myaka, the Director for Research and Development of the Ministry of Agriculture Food Security and Cooperatives (MAFC), in a speech read on his behalf by Dr Hussein Mansoor, Assistant Crops Director in the same Ministry, lauded the project team from the five countries for these milestones. He noted the importance of the crop in Tanzania and the region and the destruction by the two diseases.
“We value cassava as a food crop and a cash crop that will fight poverty. However, the yield is still very low, around 6 t/ha, partly due to attack by these deadly viral diseases. This initiative is therefore extremely important to the country,” he said.
Cleaning up the cassava
‘While we have faced many challenges in the project, I believe we are on track. One of the major challenges was in cleaning up all the varieties to ensure they were virus-free before distributing them for trials. It was difficult and one of the varieties is still not clean,” said Dr Edward Kanju, IITA cassava breeder who is leading the initiative
In addition the countries have also initiated regeneration trials of their own five best varieties to see how they respond to the viruses and to identify those which remain healthy for a long time even when infected.
The virus cleaning was carried out by Natural Resources Institute (NRI) and the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate (KEPHIS). KEPHIS also carried out the initial multiplication before forwarding the material to a commercial tissue culture company, Genetics Technologies International Limited (GTIL), for mass multiplication. The virus-free status of the disease was verified by the Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute (MARI) and IITA.
Clean seed system
The project is also the setting up of a pilot cassava seed system in Tanzania. Currently, there are no commercial seed systems in most of the cassava growing countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Farmers mostly replant their old stock or borrow from a neighbor. This is contributing to the spread of the two diseases.
In setting up the system, the released varieties from the breeders will go into a tissue culture lab to ensure they are virus-free and for rapid multiplication to distribute to commercial seed companies for mass multiplication for distribution to farmers.
Under this objective, great progress has also been reported. A team was assembled of all the key stakeholders including the Department of Research and Development of the Tanzania Agriculture Ministry, the Tanzania Official Seed Certification Institute (TOSCI), and the Mennonites Economic Development Association (MEDA) to develop a draft clean seed system. St andards for cassava seed certification have also been developed.
Four clean sites have also been established in Kagera, Hombolo, Mtwara, and Tanga regions under the leadership of the Sugarcane Research Institute, another project partner. A robust protocol has also been developed for monitoring the health of the cassava in these sites.
“The challenge we faced included maintaining a very low population of the whitefly, the vector responsible for spreading the diseases,” said James Legg, IITA’s virologist who is leading this component.
The next steps for the 5CP project include hardening and multiplying the clean TC plantlets for national trials in selected sites and incorporating the cassava certification guidelines in the Government of Tanzania’s Seed Act.
Collaboration
The week-long review meeting also brought together three other partner projects funded by the Gates Foundation to facilitate lesson sharing and collaboration. These are the “Commercially sustainable, Quality assured Cassava Seed Distribution System in Tanzania: Pilot Innovation Project” dubbed “Muhogo mbegu bingwa” which is led by the Mennonite Economic Development Associates (Canada) and the “Community Action in Cassava Brown Streak Disease Control through Clean Seed” project led by the Department of Research and Development (DRD) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives.
“We launched the three projects in November 2012. They are all related. 5CP is focusing on crop improvement and on setting up a seed system. The grant to MEDA is exploring different ways to commercialize seed systems to make cassava seeds available to farmers cost effectively. And the third initiative is to involve the communities in phytosanitation. You can have clean seeds but if farmers are not empowered to keep the diseases off their farms, all the efforts will be in vain. Therefore they need to be empowered to control the further spread of diseases,” said Dr Regina Kapinga, a senior program officer from the Gates Foundation who was also at the meeting.
Other projects funded by Gates such as the Cassava Adding Value for Africa (C:AVA) and Yam Improvement for Income and Food Security in West Africa (YIISFWA), were also present for sharing of lessons learned and cross fertilization of ideas.
“We must ensure that farmers make money from cassava. So with all these projects, we are working along the cassava value chain from developing improved varieties, conducting adoptive testing to ensure they meet farmers’ preferences, all the way to markets and consumption and value addition” Kapinga said.
For more details on the progress of the 5CP project see 5CP Updates on Piloting a cassava seed system and Regional exchange of elite cassava varieties
For more details, please contact: Njuguna Catherine, c.njuguna@cgiar.org
About IITA www.iita.org
The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is one of the world’s leading research partners in finding solutions for hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. Its award-winning research for development (R4D) approach addresses the development needs of tropical countries. IITA works with partners to enhance crop quality and productivity, reduce producer and consumer risks, and generate wealth from agriculture. IITA is a non-profit organization founded in 1967 in Nigeria and governed by a Board of Trustees. IITA works on the following crops: cowpea, soybean, banana/plantain, yam, cassava, and maize. IITA is a member of CGIAR, a global agriculture research partnership for a food secure future.
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