SARI Introduces New Maize, Soybean Seeds

The Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (SARI) has released five new maize and three soybean genotypes with a call on farmers in Northern Ghana to purchase seeds from truly certified seed growers in order to avoid contamination since most seeds being sold by uncertified seed growers were not of good quality. 

 

The National Variety Release and Technical Committee under the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) approved the release of the five new maize and three soybean genotypes for the 2013 farming season at Nyankpala in the Kumbungu District of the Northern Region.

 

The five new maize genotypes or seeds include Sanzal-sima, Ewul-Boyu, Wang Dataa, Kpari-sima and Tigli. The soybeans include afaya, songda and another type.

 

The new genotypes are more adaptable to the Savanna Ecological Zone (which comprise the Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions as well as the Northern parts of Volta and Brong Ahafo Region), which is commonly characterized with challenges of drought and striga infestation, according to crop scientists at SARI.

 

The new maize and soybean seeds took between 90 and 115 days to mature with potential yields ranging from 4.5 tonnes per hectare to 5.4 tonnes per hectare.

 

The lead scientist at SARI with specialty in plant breeding and genetics Dr. Nicholas Denwar, noted that the cultivation of these new seeds were more adaptable to the climatic conditions of Northern Ghana and would help improve crop yields to achieve the needed food security in the area.

 

However, he cautioned farmers against purchasing seeds from uncertified seed growers in the region since MoFA did not regulate their activities. Most of the seeds sold by these uncertified seed growers, he added, were largely mixed or contaminated with different varieties of hybrid seeds that could reduce the yields of crops.

 

Farmers, according to Dr. Denwar “should always try to buy certified seeds from seed growers or commercial seed sellers because they are at least supervised by the MoFA to ensure that the seeds that they produce are of good quality and thus will give farmers the desired bumper harvest they yearn for.”

 

Dr. Denwar also emphasised that the new varieties released by SARI and MoFA were good breeds intended to control fields with striga infestation, which were common among cereal crops.

 

Some of the new varieties of soybeans such as afayah and songda, he explained, were good for the control of striga in maize, millet and sorghum, stressing that “if a farmer had striga infestation on his field and he grows these two materials for two years, he is going to reduce the striga seed bank in the soil such that, the following year when he (farmer) grows maize or sorghum he would have high yield.”

 

Meanwhile, Dr. Mashark Abdulai of SARI also told newsmen that the new breed would be converted into the breeding of hybrid seeds that will make it easier for farmers to use to produce their seedlings.