cassava Archives - Page 4 of 14

Private company explores cassava uptake in the Bida-Badeggi zone

One of the oversight functions of the commodity value chains in the Agricultural Transformation Agenda Support Program, Phase One (ATASP-1) is to link farmers and producers to off-takers of their products. Based on this, a team from Dufil Prima Foods Plc., Lagos, makers of Indomie Noodles, Power Oil, and Hypo bleach, was in Niger State…

IITA and partners launch new project to improve cassava seed distribution and disease control in Rwanda

IITA and Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB), together with Dutch partners, SPARK and Wageningen University, launched the Cassava Agribusiness Seeds System (CASS) project on 18 July in Kigali. The CASS project’s main objective is to help farmers have better access to clean cassava seed. Farmers’ access to clean cassava seed is identified…

Akilimo decision support system for cassava farmers promoted

Akilimo decision support system for cassava farmers in Nigeria and Tanzania

The African Cassava Agronomy Initiative (ACAI) has released its first field test version of the Akilimo decision support system in paper and application format. Extension agents will use these to help cassava farmers in Nigeria and Tanzania optimize their productivity and income from growing cassava. The name Akilimo is coined from a combination of two…

Cassava farmers in Tanzania to benefit from new industry partnership with ACAI project

At a recent meeting in Tanzania, IITA, through the African Cassava Agronomy Initiative (ACAI) and the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI-Naliendele) agreed to explore areas of collaboration with the Cassava Starch Tanzania Corporation (CSTC). Demand for cassava is increasing as more companies are seeking to process the roots into high-value, starch-rich flour. New processing capacity…

TAAT cassava compact launched in Burundi

With support from the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) Cassava Compact was launched on 2 April in Bujumbura, Burundi. The Director General of the National Office for Seed Inspection and Certification (Office National de Contrôle et de Certification des Semences [ONCCS]), Fidèle Gahungu, opened the ceremony on behalf of…

BASICS ARPM 2019: Communicating and outscaling successes beyond project life

The Building an Economically Sustainable Integrated Seed System for Cassava (BASICS) project hosted its stakeholders for the 2019 Annual Review and Planning Meeting (ARPM) on 11–13 March at IITA-Ibadan, Nigeria. Director of Pipal Limited, Kenya, Sue Davison, facilitated the meeting with the theme “Communicate,” which reflected on the activities of the project in the past…

Agriculture extension officers learning how to inspect cassava seeds in the field.

MEDA, IITA, and Tanzania’s seed certification agency train extension workers on cassava seed inspection

The Building an Economically-Sustainable Seed System in Tanzania for Cassava (BEST Cassava) project has trained over 70 Agricultural extension officers on cassava seed inspection and certification to become certified cassava seed inspectors. This is part of the project’s efforts to ensure farmers in Tanzania have access to high quality planting materials of high-yielding, disease-resistant, improved…

IITA scientists develop decision support tools to improve cassava agronomy in Africa

Scientists under the African Cassava Agronomy Initiative (ACAI) have developed decision support tools (DSTs) which can help farmers with the best recommendations for planting cassava in their fields. The new DSTs were developed to replace the older “blanket” recommendations, which did not consider site-specific conditions and thus often produced poor results. ACAI is a five-year project focusing on six use-cases, which reflect the different issues…

IITA research shows: Adopting improved cassava varieties reduces poverty

A team of IITA Scientists led by Wossen Assfaw, have documentary evidence to show that effective adoption of an agricultural technology reduces poverty, especially in the case of improved cassava varieties in Nigeria. Empirical evidence on the relationship between agricultural research and poverty reduction has suggested that improved agricultural technologies may not necessarily lead to…

IITA’s mobile app to track cassava seeds now in Tanzania

Timely access to quality seed is a major challenge in the production of cassava in Tanzania. A mobile application for real-time tracking of cassava seed production developed by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) for Nigeria is now available in Tanzania as part of efforts to address this challenge. The application, known Cassava SeedTracker,…