The African Agricultural Technology
Foundation (AATF) has signed a license agreement with Japan Tobacco (JT) for
access to technologies that will address rice productivity constraints
affecting smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The agreement involves the application of
JT’s transformation technology to develop new rice varieties for use by
smallholder farmers in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda.
The initiative, known as the Nitrogen Use
Efficient Water Use Efficient and Salt Tolerant (NEWEST) Rice Project, seeks to
address some of the major constraints that face rice production in SSA.
The goal of the project is to develop and
disseminate farmer preferred and locally adapted rice varieties with enhanced
nitrogen-use efficiency, water-use efficiency and salt tolerance. JT will offer
the technology free of charge to the AATF with an aim of supporting
humanitarian aid projects.
“The slow growth in domestic rice production
has been attributed to low yields being achieved by rice farmers in SSA,” said
Dr Denis Kyetere, the Executive Director of AATF.
“Several factors are responsible for the low
rice production. However, nitrogen deficiency and drought have been cited as
leading constraints to upland rice production, while high salinity is
increasingly becoming a major problem in many rice growing areas of Africa,” he
continued.
Rice is an important staple food and a
commodity of strategic significance across much of Africa. Driven by changing
food preferences in the urban and rural areas and compounded by high population
growth rates and rapid urbanisation, rice consumption in SSA has been growing
by 6 percent per annum over the years, more than double the rate of population
growth.
However, according to the Food and
Agriculture Organisation, the area under rice production in SSA has stagnated
at about 8 million hectares, producing about 14.5 million tonnes per year
against an annual consumption of 21 million tonnes. These production and
consumption trends imply a production deficit of about 6.5 million tonnes per
year valued at US$ 1.7 billion that is imported annually. Insufficient rice
production affects the wellbeing of over 20 million smallholder farmers in SSA
who depend on rice as their main food.
“The license will enable the project to
utilise our plant transformation technology for monocot species, PureIntro®,
developing and deploying the nitrogen efficient, water efficient, and salt
tolerant rice products, free of royalties,” said Mr Masamichi Terabatake, JT’s
Chief Strategy Officer.
JT’s plant biotechnology is independently
managed from its core businesses including its tobacco business and food
business, and is not applied to its product development conducted within those
businesses.
PureIntro is an agrobacterium-mediated plant
transformation technology that is recognised worldwide as de facto standard for
monocot transformation. The technology reduces development costs and time.
PureIntro has been licensed by JT to more than 50 private and public entities
worldwide for numerous monocots including maize, rice, wheat, barley, sorghum,
sugarcane, switchgrass, miscanthus, forage and turf.
“The agreement will also allow AATF to
sub-license the transformed materials to other public institutions working on
the project. This will enable them to field test the materials in different
ecologies in SSA,” Mr. Terabatake continued. The institutions will have the
freedom to breed new rice varieties, using the transformed materials as the
source of the desired traits.
The NEWEST Rice for Africa Project was launched
by AATF in 2008. The initiative aims to transform some varieties of the New
Rice for Africa (NERICA) to improve their productivity in nitrogen-poor soils,
drought prone regions and in fields that have become excessively salty over
time. The goal is to provide smallholder rice farmers with higher yielding
varieties that are well adapted to the upland and lowland rice-growing areas in
Africa.
Other partners in this private public
partnership include Arcadia Biosciences who are providing access to traits that
confer nitrogen use efficiency, water use efficiency and salt tolerance. The
University of California is donating required plant transformation
technologies. The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the
national agricultural research institutes of Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria and
Uganda will conduct the necessary field trials to test the performance of the
new varieties. The project is funded by the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) and the United Kingdom’s Department for
International Development (DFID), and will initially be implemented over a
10-year period.
The new varieties developed under the NEWEST
Rice Project are anticipated to increase rice yields, improve food security and
household income for up to 20 million smallholder farmers and their families in
SSA and reduce Africa’s dependence upon imported rice.
The African Agricultural Technology
Foundation (AATF) is a not-for-profit organisation that facilitates and
promotes public/private partnerships for the access and delivery of appropriate
proprietary agricultural technologies for use by resource-poor smallholder
farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
AATF currently works in ten countries in SSA
and facilitates access and delivery of affordable agricultural technologies for
use by smallholder farmers. Priority areas for the Foundation include
addressing targeted agricultural constraints facing these farmers which include
the impact of climate change on agriculture; pest management; soil management;
nutrient enhancement in foods; improved breeding methods; and mechanisation.
These are addressed through the access, development and deployment of
accessible, transferable, adaptable and proven technologies.
In addition to the NEWEST Rice Project, other
projects that AATF participates in include Striga control in maize, development
of insect resistant cowpea, improvement of banana for resistance to banana
bacterial wilt, biological control of aflatoxin, and drought tolerance and
insect resistance in maize, for use by smallholder farmers in SSA.
Japan Tobacco Inc. is a leading international
tobacco product company. Its products are sold in over 120 countries and its
internationally recognized cigarette brands include Winston, Camel, Mild Seven
and Benson & Hedges. With diversified operations, JT is also actively
present in pharmaceuticals and foods.
Source: Samuel Hinneh
No comments:
Post a Comment