Agric Minister Calls For Quality Seeds To Bridge Yield Gap

The curate of authorities for Agriculture and Food Security, Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, has called for greater entree to affordable and certified seeds arsenic portion of efforts to amended Nigeria’s cultivation productivity and adjacent the country’s widening output gap.

Speaking successful Abuja yesterday during a gathering with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) effect schemes valuation ngo team, the curate explained that the administration’s cultivation imaginativeness is anchored connected strengthening the effect system, recognising that prime effect is the instauration of immoderate sustainable nutrient information programme.

He noted that Nigeria’s output levels stay beneath imaginable owed to constricted entree to certified effect varieties and the prevalence of uncertified grains being sold to farmers arsenic seed.

He emphasised that seeds indispensable conscionable modern standards, including absorption to pests and diseases, tolerance to drought and adaptability to changing clime conditions.

According to the minister, improved effect prime would trim dependence connected agrochemicals, bounds pesticide residues successful cultivation exports and heighten the nutritional worth of crops.

Abdullahi said, “Our existent output spread arsenic a state is worrisome. We judge we tin bash better, but sometimes the situation is that what is being planted arsenic effect is not genuinely seed. Even erstwhile it is, determination are qualities it indispensable carry.

If we are to warrant nutrient security, farmers indispensable and should person entree to affordable, prime effect astatine each times. This is wherefore this strategy was enactment successful spot and wherefore Nigeria is much than blessed to beryllium portion of the OECD ecosystem”.

As portion of ongoing reforms, the curate added that the ministry was moving with the National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC) to grow inspection capacity, modulate the informal effect assemblage and curb fraudulent practices by operators passing disconnected grains arsenic certified seed.

He emphasised the value of strengthening monitoring and enforcement mechanisms to guarantee compliance with rules and regulations.

In his remarks, the director-general of NASC, Fatuhu Muhammadu, outlined Nigeria’s advancement since joining the OECD Seed Schemes successful 2023.

He noted that Nigeria has trained dozens of effect certification staff, secured accession for atom and sorghum, and assumed a enactment relation wrong the African effect sector.

Membership of OECD, helium explained, positions Nigeria to pull planetary effect companies, boost home effect entrepreneurship, and physique stronger determination partnerships crossed West Africa.

The OECD ngo squad led by effect strategy officers Aurelia Nicault and Rouillard Christophe commended Nigeria’s committedness to improving its effect system, noting that the country’s rank successful the planetary effect strategy would enactment cultivation sustainability, amended husbandman livelihoods, and grow determination and planetary commercialized opportunities.