Climate change: Plant different crop varieties to prevent losses, Centre urges farmers

National Centre for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology (NACGRAB) has advised farmers to plant different varieties of crops to prevent total loss due to climate change challenges.

NACGRAB Director, Dr Anthony Okere, gave the advice during a Technical Working Group (TWG) meeting on Seed for Resilience (SFR) project.

The programme was organised by NACGRAB, in collaboration with Global Crop Diversity Trust (Crop Trust), in Ibadan on Friday.

According to Okere, most farmers in Nigeria usually do mono-cropping, which can lead to total loss, occasioned by climate change challenges.

“We must encourage our farmers not to have only one accession of a particular crop on their field so that they can have something to fall back on whenever the issue of climate change challenges comes on board.

“If they do this, there will not be total loss for any farmer because we are trying to create a smart agriculture by way of releasing materials that farmers will always need,” the director said.

He said that the project was aimed at establishing new modes of collaboration by encouraging and exposing diversity of crops to farmers so as to tackle the effects of climate change.

Okere said that most farmers in Oyo State had been taught on better ways of cultivating cowpea and sorghum accessions in the last three years.

He said that the clusters of farmers put together for the project would be the future drivers of food security in Nigeria, as regards climate change.

“Most of the cluster groups that we have trained will help in seed multiplication of cowpea and sorghum accessions,” he said.

Giving an update on the project, Mr Sunday Osewa, a NACGRAB staff member, said it came into existence in 2021, with the aim of improving the efficiency of NACGRAB genebank.

He said that the project was also targetted at enhancing the use of conserved genepool by farmers and other users of genetic resources in the country.

Osewa said that a total of 150 farmers in Oyo State were given cowpea and sorghum seeds accessions for dissemination between January and August.

Osewa said that the farmers were selected from Ipapo, Igboho, Kishi, Otu and Igboora towns, adding that the feedback gotten from them about the high yield of those seeds was very encouraging.

He said that there were more seed accessions in the NACGRAB genebank that would be given to farmers.

In his remarks, Prof. Owolade Feranmi, of Institute of Agriculture Research and Training (IAR&T), Ibadan, called on cowpea farmers to commence plantation between Aug. 25 and Sept. 10 and plant different varieties to increase germination.

“Planting of different varieties will enable the farmers to identify those that can grow well in a particular climate change and this will reduce loss,” he said.

NACGRAB was established with the mandate to collect and conserve valuable genetic resources for food and agriculture as well as ensure their sustainable usage.