Ahmadu Bello University Revolution in Seeds Technology III

Ahmadu Bello University Revolution in Seeds Technology III

The improved varieties of cowpea developed and released by Ahmadu Bello University Zaria through the Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) were code named SAMPEA. Within a span of three decades (1978 to 2008), the university had developed and released ten varieties; SAMPEA 1, 2, 3, 4, up to 10, respectively. The varieties were aimed at increased productivity and meeting some production challenges such as pests, diseases, low inputs requirements and adaptable to the environment. Cowpeas are highly venerable to diseases and attractive to pests, being crops with high nutritional values. As mentioned in the previous article, cowpea has significant percentage of protein and fat compared to cereals and tuber crops, which make the crops development more challenging. The varieties are resistant to many diseases and pests such as bacterial blight, maruca pod borer, pod sucking bugs, bruchids and many other destructive microorganisms. Their maturity  period are of medium duration from 78 to 100 days. the potential yields of these varieties ranged from 1.2 to 2 tons per hectare. This is much higher than the average estimated yield of 0.483 tons per hectare for cowpea in West Africa as reported by Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The sizes of seeds for these varieties are diverse from small size seed to large size while the colors are white, brown and dark brown, respectively. Among these varieties, however, SAMPEA 8, 9 and 10 were developed as special varieties through active collaboration between International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and IAR/Department of Plant Science, ABU Zaria. An International renown cowpea breeder, Prof. B. B. Singh led a team ABU Scientists; M. F. Ishyaku, O. O. Olufajo, A. A. Zaria, H. A. Ajeigbe, S. G. Mohammed and A. Y. Kamara developed the varieties. In addition to other features common to all the varieties (SAMPEA 1-10), an outstanding feature developed for the three these varieties is short maturity period as they could mature, from planting to harvest, within a span of 40 to 60 days. This unique feature has many advantages; first farmers can produce cowpea two times  in one season, wet or dry. Second, new improved cowpea can come to the market at the middle of wet season when  foods are generally scare and this can be comforting to farmers and rural dwellers. Third, the production of cowpea two times in a season increases cropping intensity by one hundred percent to farmers and land utilization.

The next set of cowpea varieties developed by ABU Zaria in collaboration with IITA and University of Agriculture Makurdi were SAMPEA 14 and 15. SAMPEA 14 is a special breed of cowpea as it has diverse and wide genetic background. It was developed out of crossing and backcrossing of many varieties including kamboinse local from Burkina Faso and Ife-brown from Nigeria among others. It is high yielding variety with an average of 14 seeds per pod and about 30 pods per stand. It has long peduncles that carried pods above the canopy. In addition, the variety is heat tolerance, drought tolerance, Striga resistance and Alectra resistance. This variety was released in 2011.  SAMPEA 15 is similar to SAMPEA 14 except that the seeds are pure white in color with black eye and its maturity period slightly longer than that of SAMPEA 14. The maturity period of the two varieties ranges from 70 to 80 days.

The other two mandate crops for IAR/ABU are groundnut and cotton. Groundnut originated from South America, but is now widely cultivated throughout the tropical, sub-tropical and the warm temperate areas. Groundnut is an economic crop and has many uses.  The haulms are important folder for livestock, especially, sheep and goat and in particular ram.  The plant, through its biological activities nitrogen fixation, is an important soil fertility conserver.  The nuts are consumed roasted, boiled or as confectionary, snack nuts, peanut butter or in cookies.  The nut is crushed to produce oil which is principally used for cooking.  Similarly, groundnut is also used for other industrial purposes such as; pharmaceuticals as carrier, cosmetics. It is also used for the production of margarine. The by-product, meal (cake) is used for both human and livestock consumption. The production of groundnut in Nigeria is largely a smallholder crop, grown under rainfall conditions in semi-arid areas.  Although it is grown in commercial farms in America and Europe, the developing countries, with their small scale production, account for over 95 of world groundnut area and 94 percent of production volume  as cited by some literatures.  Thus, production is concentrated in Asia and Africa.  Asia accounts for 60 and 70 percent of world area and product respectively.  India (35% area 28% production) and China (17% area, 34% production) are the major producers in Asia.  Africa accounts for 35 percent of the global area but only 21 percent of the production level.  The major groundnut producers in Africa are Senegal, Nigeria and Sudan. Nigeria was at one time, the leading exporter of groundnut in the world.  However, due to production and marketing challenges, Nigeria lost out to other countries and is currently not even listed among the world medium exporters of this important commodity.  China, USA and Argentina are the current top World exporters of groundnut.

In the last three decades, ABU Scientists have developed four prominent varieties of groundnuts; SAMNUT 21, 22, 23 and 24. These varieties are high yielding (2-2.5 tons per hectare) compared to the yield (0.3 tons per hectare) of local varieties. They are resistant to common diseases and pests such as roselle, leaf spot, etc, good shelling percentage (60 - 65 %) and early maturity. They are adaptable to Sahel and Sudan savanna areas, known for groundnut production since colonial era.

Cotton is another important cash crop, an exclusively major input to textile industry whose usage to mankind for clothing and other domestic purposes has no boundary. It is a crop with high global market demand at all times. ABU has recorded significant breakthroughs in the development and breeding of improved cotton seeds for the last thirty years. SAMCOT 1, 2, 3 and 4 were successfully developed and released to the relevant stakeholders by the university.

All these achievements were made by IAR/ABU to strengthen the Nigerian seeds industry so as to meet the national seeds requirements as a prerequisite for the development of agriculture. The university follows the standard protocol for the development and breeding of all the mentioned varieties of seeds. The seed development protocol is a herculean one, It  requires intellectual capacity, materials and time. For instance, to develop an improved seed requires development of breeder's seeds, foundation seeds and out-growers' seeds  before reaching out to the market for farmers. Each step takes two to three years consecutively making the development of improved seeds to reach ten years or more. Despite all these outstanding achievements recorded by the university over the years, no significant recognition was accorded to the university except a letter of commendation from Kano state government for the development of cowpea at one time. Again, many Nigerian farmers are not aware of these feats and even those aware are hardly accessible to these improved varieties. Why?  This is because most of these varieties are not popularized due to poor funding of the extension services in the country.  Further, seed materials are often very expensive, placing poor farmers at a disadvantage. Large seed companies concentrate more on big farmers that have large demand for seed, especially hybrid maize and vegetable seed. They often ignore seeds with thin profit margins, such as self-pollinated crops, like wheat, rice and cowpea groundnut, because farmers often save the seeds from one harvest to the next and because proprietary laws are missing or not enforced. Again, the seed industry in Nigeria is faced with a myriad problems. Prominent among the problems are a lack of seed policy and inadequate support for seed industry development, long delays between variety development and variety registration and release, the inadequate involvement of farmers in participatory varietal selection, leading to low adoption of released varieties, a poor enabling environment for private sector participation and survival, weak regional seed trade development and seed market information systems.

In an effort to improve the availability of improved seeds to the farmers, Non-governmental organizations funded the community seed production projects as a strategy to ensure the high adoption of released varieties in the country. The goal of NGO’s intervention in the seed industry was to assist farmers and seed producers to develop sustainable seed production systems, capable of providing a regular supply of high quality seeds of superior varieties to the farming communities.

The support from the Network was through the continuous supply of improved germplasm adapted to local conditions, technical assistance with seed production, training, provision of credit in the form of inputs for seed production, and promotion of improved OPVs to encourage adoption.

Finally, government and its agencies should recognize extra ordinary efforts made by Nigerians and Institutions as encouragement for achieving more. Agricultural extension system must be supported to achieve foods security in this era of population explosion, which the country is witnessing. (With additional report from Dr U. Alhassan)