Audu Ogbeh: Minister of agriculture

The Federal Government has approved the registration and release of nine hybrid crops varieties developed by scientists for Nigerian farmers to boost agricultural production in the country.

Dr Sunday Aladele, Registrar, National Centre for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology (NACGRAB) made this known in a statement issued on Tuesday and made available to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan.

NACGRAB is a parastatal under Federal Ministry of Science and Technology.

He said the release of the crops was announced by the chairman, National Varieties Release Committee (NVRC), Chief Awoyemi Oladosu at the 24th NVRC meeting held at NACGRAB.

He listed the nine successful varieties as two hybrid white yam (UMUDr/020) and (UMUDr/021), two maize hybrids (SAMMAZ 49) and (SAMMAZ 51), and one maize variety (SAMMAZ 52).

Others were two cowpea varieties (FUAMPEA 1 and FUAMPEA 2), one amaranthus or leaf vegetable hybrid (NHAMAR 1) and one okra hybrid (NHOKRA 1).

According to him, the yam varieties were developed by National Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike, and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Ibadan.

“The maize varieties were developed by Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR), Zaria and IITA while the cowpeas were from Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, IAR, and IITA.

“The two vegetable varieties, amaranthus and okra were from National Horticultural Research Institute, Ibadan,” he said.

The registrar thanked the Minister of Science and Technology for facilitating the funding for the meeting.

Aladele also thanked the West Africa Agricultural Programme for the financial support received so far.

The Registrar announced that 166 crop varieties from Nigeria had been entered into ECOWAS catalogue.

They included 59 maize, 18 sorghum, 14 rice, five pearl millet, 18 cowpea, three groundnut, 24 cassava, 19 yam, three potato and three tomato varieties.

Also, Prof. Olusoji Olufajo, chairman Technical Sub Committee (Crops) said the committee had adopted the recommendation of the ad-hoc committee set up by NVRC on funding.

He said the committee recommended that anybody submitting publicly bred material should be charged N50,000 and privately bred material should be charged N200,000 application fees for registration per crop variety/hybrid.

According to him, 24th NVRC meeting held at NACGRAB was attended by crop scientists, breeders, seed companies and agriculture experts from all over the country. (NAN)