Peeping at the Research and Development Centre: IAR is Perfecting Agricultural Products Development

Peeping at the Research and Development Centre: IAR is Perfecting Agricultural Products Development

Research is the key to unlocking the huge potential and bridging the productivity gaps in various commodities in the Nigerian agricultural production system. Under the auspices of the Federal Government, Nigeria has 14 commodities-based Research Institutes and four Agricultural support service providers and coordinating and supervisory body. These do not include states owned agricultural research Institutes. As part of Nigerian structure to develop agriculture, the 14 commodities based NARIs are mandated to genetically improve their mandate crops, develop their improved production, Processing and utilization technologies as well as develop preventive and curative measures against environmental hazards associated with farming system. Each of the 14 NARIs were allocated commodities, which they have comparative advantages based on their ecological locations. All the major agricultural commodities being produced in Nigeria are covered by these NARIs. Similarly, The 4 NARIs, providers of Agricultural Support Services are NAERLS Zaria, NCAM Ilorin, ARMTI Ilorin and NVRI Vom near Jos.  The major mandate of NAERLS is to provide Extension and Liaison Services, NCAM has a major of developing technologies for Mechanizing Nigerian Agriculture while ARMTI is mandated to identify managerial needs/Problems and develop appropriate interventions to address them. VOM is mandated to identify animal diseases, develop their treatment and control, and production of animal vaccines against diseases.

Agricultural product development is a technique involving production of agricultural commodity, transforming it to useful product as ready-made food for consumption or to other useful product to mankind. This technique involves stages that are related and depended on each other. The stages are production, post-harvest handling, storage, conservation, processing, marketing and utilization. The stages are not only interrelated, overlapped and interlocked but could be planned and done in a chain series. That is why they are code named “value chain” of a given commodity. In the recent past, National Agricultural Research Institutes (NARIs) whose major mandates are improvement of crops genetic and production practices were concentrating their research activities to production with less emphasis on the postproduction processes. However, the economic downturn and the concern for economic diversification are making NARIs to give the required emphasis to processing, handling, marketing and utilization of their mandates crops. One of such NARIs is Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) located in Samaru – Zaria, Kaduna state.  

Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR), one of the 14 commodities based research centre is assiduously making effort in agricultural product development. IAR is one of the research centres of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. It was established in 1922 as the headquarters of the Department of Agriculture of the defunct Northern Region, It is located on latitude 11 degree North and longitude 7 degree East, some 15kms from Zaria town and in the North-West of the Main Campus Ahmadu Bello University, Samaru. One of the Nigerian Laws transferred the Institute to Ahmadu Bello University, as a Research Institute on 4th October 1962. Initially, the Institute was assigned the responsibility of conducting research for the Northern States in conjunction with Ministry of Agricultural and Natural Resources of each state. Presently, IAR has three Research Outstations as Agricultural Research Station (ARS) located at Kano in Kano State, Kadawa, Kano State and Irrigation Research Station, Talata Mafara, Zamfara State.

By April, 1987 following the reorganization of National Research Systems in the country, IAR was mandated to conduct research on genetic improvement of sorghum, cowpea groundnut, cotton, sunflower and later maize, castor, Artemisia and jatropha. The Institute was mandated to address problems of all agricultural food crops production in the North West Agro-ecological zone. The Zone covers seven states; Jigawa, Kaduna Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara States. In particular, the Institute is to address problems of farming system, adaptation of introduced and improved crop varieties/cultivars, development and testing of pest and disease control measures. Others problems assigned to the Institute were to device strategies for addressing the Socio-economic problems of agricultural production, soil fertility, soil stabilization, and irrigated crops production. Another important mandate for IAR is the design and fabrication of simple agricultural implements and equipment. Recently, IAR created a product Development Research Programme with mandates:

      i.         To determine nutritional and biological value of the IAR mandate crops,

    ii.         To assess the suitability of the crops for further industrial processing while improving the technology of local food processing

  iii.         To monitor foods and feeds produced from these crops for toxic contaminants.

The IAR mandates crops cut across cereals, grain legumes, horticultural and oil crops making them perfect for undertake the product development to conclusion. What are the breakthroughs of IAR in agricultural products development?

Some of the achievements recorded are the development of composite products and their characterization for nutritional and anti-nutritional values. The products are maize composite bread, cakes, cookies, meat-pie and Chin-chin. IAR was also able to produce these products from millet composite, sorghum composite, cassava composite, sweet potato composite and tiger nut composite.  Maize and sorghum are major cereal crops massively produced by the savanna zone of Nigeria whose production estimates are between 4 and 6 million metric tons. The crops are major sources of protein, carbohydrate, minerals and vitamins. These achievements of making bread, cakes, cookies, meat-pie and Chin-chin from maize, sweet potato, cassava, tiger nut composite flours are giant stride by IAR. Hitherto, these products were only known to be produce from wheat composite flour, which had to be imported with hard earned foreign exchange. This is a golden opportunity for agro-allied industries and local bakers to commercially produce these products for the nation. It will certainly save the country the huge foreign exchange at this period of economic recession and may even earn external revenue to the country through exportation to the neighboring countries. Still on the food products, works are ongoing in the development of peanut butter spread, peanut butter chocolate, cocoanut candy, peanut cookies, and cowpea strips among others.

Another area of focus by IAR is characterization of Nigerian jatropha for the production of biodiesel. It is one of the Institute’s research activities in the genetic improvement of jatropha for high oil content and quality for biodiesel production as well as value addition for use as seedcake to produce animal feeds. Seeds from 57 lines of jatropha germplasm were analyzed for their biofuel content as well as other physical and chemical properties, which could provide different usages of the crop. The results of the proximate analysis of 57 jatropha lines indicate that the mean percentages of ash, oil, carbohydrate, protein and fibra were 2.6, 37.6, 35.4, 16.3 and 22,1, respectively. Consequently, it could be concluded that jatropha, in addition to biofuel, has potential for making seed cake formulation because of the high protein, carbohydrate and ash content, if its toxicity can be controlled, perhaps through fermentation.

The efforts made by IAR in agricultural product development are commendable but there is need for the agro-allied industries to take the gauntlet for commercialization of the products and make them available to end-users. It is high time that the Federal government formulates a policy to compel industries to use the prototypes products developed by our research centres for commercialization. Alongside the policy, incentives could be provided to industries for using our indigenous innovations and research results that were found viable. This has numerous advantages; strengthening the research centres through patronage, increase productivity of the centres and industries, boost the nation economy and creating jobs opportunities to many Nigerians and foreigners. No doubt, IAR has demonstrated her capability to produce viability products; the ball is in the court of policy makers and industries. Will they kick it? Nigeria is tired of importing what it can produce in abundance