ABUJA: The Yam Improvement for Income and Food Security in West Africa (YIIFSWA) in conjunction with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan in south west Nigeria has inaugurated seed yam propagation technology, Aeroponics system.Aeroponics system is an effective high quality seed yam propagation technology.
The YIIFSWA Project Leader, Dr. Nobert Maroya, performed the inauguration of the technology at the National Institute of Root Crop Research Institute, Umudike in Abia on Friday.
Maroya described the technology as the first of its kind in the world, saying that the technology was only used for many years for Irish potato.
‘’This is the first time the technology is used for seed yam in the world, nobody tried it on yam but for three years we experimented on yam and we are delighted with the result,â€� he said.
He added that the technology could work for all yam varieties and that local varieties had already been adapted to the environment.
Maroya said, ‘’We want to be sure that the first set of materials we are putting in are clean, disease-free and virus-free and that anything you are generating out of it is clean.”
He said that the innovation had solved the constraint of the country’s inability to have high quality seed yam, adding that with the technology, yam could be planted and harvested all-year round.
In his speech, the Director, West Africa Research for Development Directorate of IITA, Dr. Robert Asiedu, said the new technology would help Nigeria to achieve rapid seed yam multiplication.
Asiedu said that it was estimated that Nigeria was losing about 30 per cent of yam produced annually through diseases and poor storage, saying that the technology would help to check the phenomenon.
He said the technology would help to break the unfortunate chain where seed yam that was contaminated would go into the plant, the tuber and storage system.
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