By Faridat Salifu
Behind Nigeria’s food security challenges lies a quieter, less visible problem, one that plant breeders say has been underfunded for years, research into the crop varieties farmers actually plant.
This year’s theme, “Leveraging Breeding Innovations and Strategic Partnerships for Agribusiness Investment, Stable Supply Chain and National Food Security in a Changing Climate,” reflects what NPBA President Professor Victor Adetimirin described as an urgent, interconnected set of problems facing Nigerian agriculture.
That argument took center stage Saturday in Abuja, where the Nigerian Plant Breeders Association (NPBA) held a news conference to unveil its 2026 Annual Conference, scheduled for September 23rd and 24th in the Federal Capital Territory.
Adetimirin pointed to a mounting list of pressures, climate change, new pests and diseases, soil that’s steadily losing productivity, shrinking farmland, shaky supply chains and rising costs of production, all converging at once.
Expanding farmland alone won’t fix any of it, he argued, the real fix lies in making existing agricultural systems more productive, more resilient and more profitable.
That’s where plant breeding comes in, he said, describing it as the linchpin connecting scientific research to real world food security outcomes.
Better crop varieties, bred to yield more and withstand pests, disease, drought and heat, are what actually translate abstract research into food on the table, he explained.
Framed that way, funding plant breeding isn’t a purely scientific investment, it’s an investment in productivity, business growth, stable supply chains and national food security simultaneously.
Modern tools, conventional breeding methods, genetics, biotechnology and genomics among them, give breeders the ability to produce varieties that outperform older ones on both yield and disease resistance, he said.
Getting research out of the lab and into farmers’ fields, Adetimirin argued, requires far tighter coordination between universities, research institutions, government agencies, seed companies, farmers, banks, agribusinesses and development partners.
That coordination is exactly what the two day conference is designed to encourage, a space for presenting scientific advances, exchanging ideas, forging partnerships and identifying paths toward commercially viable agricultural solutions.
He pushed back against framing the event as purely academic, describing it instead as a national development agenda built around one central question, how can science, partnership and investment combine to build an agricultural sector strong enough to feed a growing population while also generating export revenue.
Delegates will spend the two days examining how to convert scientific innovation into tangible products, businesses, investments and measurable results, he said.
His closing framing was pointed, the Abuja gathering isn’t meant to celebrate breeding achievements in isolation, it’s meant to figure out how those achievements translate into real opportunities for farmers, businesses and investors alike.
Professor Peter Aikpokpodion, who chairs the Conference Planning Committee, backed that framing with evidence, noting that crop varieties developed through modern breeding have already pushed farmer yields well past what older varieties could deliver.
Funding, however, remains the sector’s persistent weak point, he said, calling for stronger public private partnerships to sustain research programmes and seed systems going forward.
