Bio-tech will enhance commercial agriculture- Executive Director of IAR, Prof. Mohammed Ishiyaku

The Executive Director, IAR, Samaru, Zaria, Prof. Mohammed Ishiyaku has commended the effort of the government for signing into law the bio technology bill which he stated its advantages will open more economic opportunities to the sector especially in the face of agricultural commercialization in the country where challenges of crops and livestock in terms of drought, pest and disease resistance will be drastically curtailed. He advocated for the encouragement of youths into breeders’ profession. Read the excerpts of the interview he had with the Food Farm News Publisher, Mr. Ayeni, Oladehinde. 

I want to congratulate you for your appointment as the new Executive Director, Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR) and being the first of the cropping and REFILs meeting held in your tenure, let us meet you sir.

 I am Prof. Mohammed S. Ishiyaku, trained as a genetic plant breeder; I have worked as cowpea breeder, springing my career from the Ministry of Agriculture, Bauchi state, to an International Institute of Tropical Agricultural (IITA) before I took appointment with this great Institute, IAR. In my career as plant breeder, I have jointly participated with other scientists which have led to the release of eight different cowpea varieties.

With this background, I will like to start on the issue of limited breeders that is very strategic to agricultural development and food security, how do you think this issues could be tackled?

In my own opinion, we need to look back to our curriculum in the plant breeding in Nigeria and strategize it to target our younger people in this area. From my experience as a teacher in plant breeding courses, most of the complaint made by our students is always the abstract nature of our genetics, and how breeding is being carried out. If more teaching aids are developed and provided for teachers in the plant breeding courses at the first degree level, I am of the view it will attract more students and the perceived difficulty of the course can then be reduced.

 From upstream there should be some special incentives for plant breeders. Elsewhere there is what is called plant breeders’ right when releases of varieties are made, some token is being paid to plant breeders who participated in the development of the variety, also the attraction by the developed seeds industry will absorbed the breeders and thereby attracting more younger stars into it. Strategically, no modern agriculture can expand without the participation of the plant breeders. As you have agreed to the fact that plant breeders are key to stimulating other research processes like crops’ management and protection. 

It is the creation of new varieties that will create opportunity for new research areas. For example with  introduction of a new variety, you need to develop a new process of management practices for the variety therefore  if plant breeder activities are slow in any agriculture, then growth in the sector will be stagnated.

In view of the bio safety bill that has been signed by the Mr. President, what are the steps Research Institute like yours must take to ensure its effective practices considering limited funding?

 I must congratulate all Nigerians especially those who have hands in the pushing for the signing of this bill because it will provide a flood gate of activities that will be developmental associated with financing of science and technology in the area of bio technology. For us, it will now enable us to conclude the research that we have been undertaking in terms of developing a new variety that will be utilized by the technology tools. 

Conventional plant breeding has developed more than agriculture to a very large extent, but somehow there are certain things that cannot be conventionally accomplished scientifically until certain modern bio technology tools are applied. This bill will enable the utilization of such products from bio-technology. That means without signing the bill we would have been left behind thereby denying our farmers opportunity for better yield through resistance to though pest diseases. 

Let me be specific, I am leading the research on insect resistance to cowpea, the  BT cowpea now has resistant to one notorious insect which do not have conventional sources of resistance. So the passage of this bill we now enable us to move out from on-station trial to on-farm trial and eventually be able to release this resistant cowpea variety to our farmers for use. 

Some school of thought are looking at it from the angle of low funding research Institutes are facing with the addition of this Bt passage, would this funding be able to accommodate its implementation to effectiveness?

We are quite hopeful that the passage of the bill in my own opinion is the reflection of the commitment of the government and our legislators in harassing the potentials of this new Bio-technology. With this, it is now left to us scientists to exact appropriate pressure on both sides of legislators and executives especially the legislators who represent their constituencies to provide necessary funding to enable us exploit our full potentials in this regards.

What benefits do you think bio technology bill signed will avail the agricultural sector for the benefits of people who do not know?

 The importance is coming based on many constraints the agricultural sector is facing in both livestock and crops. For example, drought is one area that conventional methods cannot control as there is limit to which any plant materials can withstand shortage of waters which is called drought, but through bio technology there are some inheritable materials or genes that is probably lacking in a plant which will be transferred in order to enhance resistance to drought or any other diseases or stress. 

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You are aware that there are plants that exist in the dessert and this is because they are endowed with a special gene that enable them to draw waters from the deepest part of the soil for survival. But these plants are similarly related to our conventional crops, and through the act of modern bio technology, one can transfer the genes in these plants grown in the wild to those ones planted on our farms so as to enable them have stronger resistance to  drought and other stress  even during scanty raining season. By this technology you can grow plants in unthinkable areas. 

For insect pest that I have just attributed to cowpea, about 15,000 different accessions of cowpeas from  all over the world have no resistance to this insect as it completely destroyed all these varieties thereby resulting to huge loss as high as 80%. But with the Bt resistance, the cowpea is now resistant to these insects pest, so this is just a few advantages that are bound to accrue to agricultural development. I am sure the next question by people will be how the muti national companies might exploit the situation to make money out of people from these products.

 I will say today we are using the mobile telephone, it is a technology that we are paying for but we are paying optionally as nobody forces us to adopt this technology, it is based on the value derived from it that made us to adopt it. You cannot tell me that the mobile telephone companies are not making profit on us but the difference is how much value we are getting out of our money. So if these products come, it is left to us to decide whether the value of them are important enough for us to invest in them as nobody is going to force anybody. 

What is your take on the moves going on to centralized budgetary allocation of all Agricultural Research Institute under ARCN?

In my opinion this is a pre matured move as we have seen how budgetary allocations to local government are being handled by state governments. I am not saying that the current Executive Director of the ARCN is not doing well as I have much respect for him. The current management of ARCN is good researchers that give value to research and strategy needed for it.  

 But our fear is what happens if somebody comes tomorrow who do not share this view nor has lesser commitment that may put research in a very tight corner. Research Institutes are institutions that are endowed with research intellectuals and there must be that freedom to work effectively. If we impose a straight jacket management including financial management, then the intellectual potentials for Research Institutes to independently think of how to solve problem will be comprised. 

So my submission is that the supervisory role or the coordinating role of the agricultural research council of Nigeria should be strengthened in such a manner that they would determine the strategic nature of research to be undertaken, they can determine what and what to be carried out as research priority in line with National development objectives. But as for financing, it should be left to the legislatives to determine how fund will be disbursed on the basis of convincing evidences presented by the research Institutes .

In the face of the present climate change and its related challenges like drought, how can the agricultural research Institute be positioned to meet these challenges?

First, I will like government to invest on capacity building of human resources through training. Each of the research Institute has several mandates to focus and government should ensure that the presumed expertise in this area does actually exist. Also, there should be an attendant financial commitment from government to ensure that these qualified human resources have actually expressed their maximum potentials in the areas of finding solution in the national agricultural problems and development.