The preparation to mitigate shortage of maize supply in the
country is under way as Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) will soon
release a genetically modified maize variety that is fall army worm and stem
borer resistant, with high yield
potential for commercialization.
The Executive Director, IAR, Prof. Mohammed F.
Ishiaku disclosed to Food Farm News yesterday in his office at Samaru, Zaria.
Prof. Ishiaku said that farmers would be more economically
competitive in the production of this (
Tela maize variety), being having a high drought and insect resistant potentials
that can withstand stem borer and fall army worm diseases which had in the past
wiped out many farms and thereby making farmers to incur great losses.
He assured Nigerians that the new genetically modified maize
would not take loner time like the cowpea because it evaluation process will
not involve many breeding processes saying ‘’
The new maize variety when release for commercialization
will be competitive enough for our farmers to produce maize in a more cheaper
cost because it has drought resistant against stem borer and fall army worm
which you know how much destructive they can be. We can all attest to how much
yield loss fall army worm can inflict on farms. It will look nonsense for
anybody to be importing maize from any other country by the time this variety
is released because our own will be cheap enough to compete economically with
any other one. And it will make our environment more healthy as there will be
reduction in the use of herbicide and insecticide against these diseases by our
farmers ’’
Responding to how
soon the variety will be released he said ‘’ this is going to take much shorter
time to commercialize because, in the case of cowpea, addition breeding work had to be done. This may not apply to ‘’ TELA
MAIZE’’. It is a crop with breeding system of just one cross for development and
evaluate in two years or three on the field’’
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