Nihort says internally generated seed varieties will reduce disease cases

The Executive Director (ED), National Institute for Horticultural Research (NIHORT), Prof. Mohammed Lawal Attanda has recently posited that availability of locally generated improved seed varieties will reduce the incidences of pest diseases in the country's food security system.

Attanda stated this during his lecture at the Institute's seminar series, pointing that " If you had developed your own local technology, the incidences of pest and diseases will reduce drastically because you created it in the first place, and solving the problem will not be a problem. For example those horti- tomatoes developed by Nihort, do you see any pest on them?"

The ED added that the institute will soon release about twenty five of its mandate crops into the market through the National Centre for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology (NACGRAB) saying the release was possible with the Federal Government funding support through its Agric ministry.

He stressed that the research direction of the Institute has also propelled its resilience in the face of lean funding pointed out that "having a research direction drives innovations"