“NAPRI has the capacity to meet our animal feeds need in Nigeria” says Prof. Joshua Amodu

NAPRI

Professor Joshua T. Amodu is a Feed and Nutrition specialist at the National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI) Zaria. In the wake of grazing reserve and grass importation controversy Food farm news sought him out to know the reaction of NAPRI on the issue. He was unambiguous in dissociating NAPRI from the grass controversy. Excerpts.

Could you introduce yourself, Prof?

Professor Joshua T. Amodu is my name, Head, Feed and Nutrition Research Programme, National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI) Zaria, I am a forage specialist with a book written on Stylosanthese in Africa which is a promising legume crop, and the book was published in 2004.

What is the involvement of your institute in the importation of grass seeds by the FMARD from Cameroon?

From what my boss told me, there was a time they wanted to import Alfalfa which is a temperate crop, but sometimes can be sub- tropical crop, for example in India where they have similar climate with Africa, but not the whole of India are tropical as there is a section of the country that is very hot, and there you find a whole lot of black people. 

This Alfalfa can be well grown in temperate region as you can cut it seven to eight times, but it can only perform well in temperate region but not in the tropical region, like ours in Nigeria. So introducing this particular specie into Nigeria will create problem. Australia is one of the three countries that have very good seed varieties adaptable to Nigeria as the country has a sound agricultural policy programme. 

They have varieties of forage species like (1) Stylosanthese-hamata, Curtivar veramo and (2) Stylosanthese guianesis (Curtivar cook). The ‘curtival ‘means the crop is very cultivable in the region, and that is why the seed is named after the region, which is Veramo, just like Cook is a region that is well adaptable to stylosanthese curtival cook. So the seeds are named after the regions meaning they are persistent in the regions. However these two seeds from Australia were introduced to Nigeria several years ago, exactly in the early 1970s, and they were found to be producing very well. (I will take you to our seed store to see what we have)They have adapted well, all over the country even in all ecologies of the country where they have been tried like Guinea Savannah from Mokwa in Niger state to Kaduna as well as in the forest region of the southwest and even do well in Sudan.

 What I am trying to say is that these two varieties of seeds can be planted well in all the ecological zones of Nigeria, except Sahel. In the introduction plot in this Institute, we have tried these seeds to ascertain the resistance traits to persist through laboratory analysis. Also during the agronomic studies, we do different cuttings to see when it will be good or best for the animals. So these are the things that must be considered before one can bring seeds into the country, in order to avoid bringing in diseases.

 So somebody cannot just bring any crop into the country without all these scientific process that I have mentioned. First you have to see whether it can be able to adapt as we have screened over 500 species of forages in Shika, NAPRI. Let me tell you, this place in 1972  used to be called the grassland i.e this Shika, before it was renamed NAPRI in 1976, and since that time we have had different  of departments and units in the Institute like Forage Research Programme, Dairy Research Programme, Investors System Research Programme.

 These are programme and units we have here. Our own is Feed and Nutrition, but usually, it used to be forage. My work and experience in forage research have made Australia government to ask me to write on Animal Nutrition which was published in 2004. So we have all it takes to produce in enough grass for cattle in Nigeria as many states have been coming here to buy grasses for multiplication. 

Lack of fund has made some of our equipment become obsolete, and this is the area government can support us so as to assist us to full capacity production for more animal feeds production in the country.