West Africa capacity building workshop for plant breeders.

29th August 2017
by secretary

Paepard

26 August 2017. Accra,- The West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI), University of Ghana, as part of its efforts to address food insecurity in West Africa, has held a two-day capacity building workshop for plant breeders.

The workshop, dubbed: “Demand Led Variety Design (DLVD),” which is run biannually at the Centre, was attended by 25 WACCI-trained plant breeders from the West African sub-region.

The participants were from Ghana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal.

The objective was to equip the plant breeders with the knowledge and skills for engaging stakeholders in plant variety design to increase adoption rates of improved varieties in Africa.

Topics taught included Principles of DVLD, Visioning and foresight for setting breeding goals, Understanding clients, New variety design and product profiling, Variety development strategy and stage plan, Monitoring, evaluation and learning, and Making use of investments in new variety development.

Related:

16 August 2017. Accra. More than half of the food crops produced in Ghana do not make it to the final consumer due to Post-Harvest Loss (PHL), the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) has said.

The Programme Coordinator of the PFAG , Ms Victoria Adongo said – in an interview during a National Policy Dialogue on PHL and Food Nutrition Security – the above figures indicated that significant volumes of food, especially grains were lost after harvest, thereby aggravating hunger and resulting in expensive inputs which is being subsidised by government being wasted.

Under the auspices of the Netherlands Development Organisation’s (SNV) Voice for Change Partnership (V4CP), the PFAG is embarking on activities aimed at informing and influencing policy by using concrete evidence and demands from grassroots to call for effective implementation, increase public investment and improvement of accountability mechanisms on PHL sustainable nutrition.

The dialogue among others sought to generate ideas on tackling PHL and sustainable nutrition that will serve as input into the medium and long-term plans of the nation’s development agenda.

Source: PAEPARD FEED

West Africa capacity building workshop for plant breeders.

Share

You might also like