Lake Chad releases 3 millet varieties, promises more to farmers, says ED

The Executive Director (ED) Lake Chad Research Institute (LCRI), Prof. Baba Gana Kabir has promised to continually ensure that farmers across all the ecologies of the country have access to all the newly released millet varieties of the Institute to achieve availability of well-fortified nutritious food in commercial quantities to checkmate import bill and create good health and wealth for Nigerian people.

This assurance was coming on the heel of recently released three millet varieties (LCIC MV5, LCIC MV6 and LCIC MV7) of the Institute in partnership with International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) by the National Varietal Release Committee (NVRC) under the chairmanship of Chief Oladosu Awoyemi.

Prof. Baba Kabir said his priority as the ED of the LCRI is to empower farmers in Nigeria with improved seeds of early high yielding tons per hectare, saying all his mandate crops that needed to be registered shall surely be presented to the NVRC for official registration, documentation and release for commercial uses to create nutritional foods for healthy living and more economic earnings to reducing high movement of rural people to urban centres for illusionary jobs.

The ED said ‘‘we are happy as a team from our Institute who had worked very hard to get these three varieties of millet registered for release and commercialization towards better livelihood through addition of more protein, iron and zinc contents to fortify them as nutritional foods for children and mothers with more money in pockets based on the high yielding qualities of the three millet varieties ’’

Prof. Kabir described the qualities that distinct the varieties from the other available crops as being able to withstand diseases, moisture stress, high yielding, early maturing and bio fortified for more nutritional foods, saying the new varieties had been fortified with protein, high iron and zinc contents just as he stressed the resistant quality of the seeds to birds’ attack.

In his response to farmers’ acceptability of the new varieties, he said that they had been involved in the research stages to acquaint them to all the seeds qualities, saying ‘‘LCRI in collaboration with ICRISAT have evaluated the millet lines for about two years each in the on stations and multi-locational trials with farmers to have arrived at these descriptive characteristics, and farmers are already aware of the qualities’’

While speaking with Acting Director, National Centre for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology (NACGRAB) Dr. Tony Okeke during a facility tour to the seed processing and cleaning, Prof. Kabir promised more partnership with the centre in area of seeds improvement in testing and preservations, saying he was impressed with what he has seen on ground.

He however promised that LCRI would continue to improve upon its activities and achievement to ensure improved seeds availability of all its major mandate crops including wheat, millet and barley which are all crops needed in many of our private food processing industries in the country, saying  ‘‘as a research Institute we will continue to do our best to ensure availability of inputs and technologies for farming system to achieve agric commercialization of the Federal Government towards making local materials available for processing and marketing to checkmate billion of naira expended on import annually.

Speaking on wheat, the ED promised more improved varieties that would be adaptable to all growing ecologies to increase numbers of planting states and farmers to meet local demand in view of the Ukraine-USSR war, and also to checkmate import on yearly basis, just as he mentioned barley new improved varieties to be soon released.

The lead scientist on millet registration, Dr. Maryam Dawud was very excited with the three releases saying she was very happy that the challenges of hunger and malnutrition based on consumption of unfortified millet commonly consumed in the northern parts of Nigeria and in general would be a thing of the past due to protein, iron and zinc contents that are now added into the newly released varieties saying that ‘‘ this is the first time in the history of Nigeria that 3 millet varieties are released at a time’’

Dr. Dawud pointed that the three varieties were of necessity to meet the needed fortified millet with protein, iron and zinc towards nutritional food to checkmate malnutrition and hunger in the Northern Nigeria where there were lesser rainfalls and higher hunger with more demand for millet as meal by both women and children.

The lead scientist said farmers who had stopped cultivating millet because of birds’ attack on the planted seeds are now back due to resistant of the three varieties to withstand such external attack saying that ‘‘ these new three varieties release have high resistance to birds attack, birds cannot easily destroy these particular seeds when planted on the field. Farmers that had stopped cultivating millet can now go back to its planting to ensure food security as birds can no longer be able to destroy their seeds anymore’’

She described the new varieties as being farmers’ demand with ability to give 20 tons on a field against the ten usual one saying ‘‘the three millet varieties have no demand problem because the farmers were involved from the begging of the research, and farmers had already familiar with them and they know the economic potentials already with high yielding in less rainfall areas. The first variety (LCIC MV6) is already with the farmers in the last two years, and farmers are waiting for the last two (LCIC MV6 and LCIC MV7) which are now released’’

Speaking to Foodfarmnews on how soon we should expect the registration and commercial release of new varieties of barley crop into the hands of farmers, the national coordinator barley value chain of LCRI, Dr. Kachalla Kyari Mala said that research effort towards achieving such feat is seriously going on, saying it would happen in the next one year or six months before the national variety release committee.

Dr. Kyari Mala said that ‘’ barley varieties will be released very soon, probably in six month time or one year. It is for companies that are into processing of malt drinks who will definitely patronise the varieties when finally released for planting to checkmate import bills running billions of naira yearly. Also barley is a good medicine for diabetics. All patients can now have efficient treatment with its avaliability’’

He advocate for more funding into research in view of the cost implication, adding that the demand for wheat has gone up in view of the Ukraine and USSR war just as he applauded the cultivation of 10,000 hectares of wheat for the year 2022-2023.