Malian farmers garner benefits of breeding initiatives, despite pandemic

Published 2021년 3월 26일

Tridge summary

The EU-APSAN-Mali project, led by ICRISAT, has successfully reached over 80,000 farmers in Mali in its inaugural year, despite challenges posed by the pandemic. The project has modernized breeding programs, introducing RapidGen, and has conducted demonstrations of new crop varieties. It has also supported over 12 students with their education and has planned activities for the next year, including visits and workshops. The project has received positive feedback from partners for its distribution of new crop varieties and its efforts in hybrid seed production. The meeting was co-organized by ICRISAT and IER and was reported by Ms Agathe Diama, with contributions from Dr Baloua Nebie and Dr Nadine Worou.

Disclaimer:The above summary was generated by Tridge's proprietary AI model for informational purposes.

Original content

EU-APSAN-Mali project makes great strides in first year. More than 80,000 farmers, seed and grain producers, agro dealers and processors in Mali were reached through radio and TV messaging during 2020. This complemented 145 demonstrations of new varieties of sorghum, pearl millet, groundnut and cowpea for 3,300 producers. Even during times of a pandemic, assistance to farmers must continue, as was aptly shown in the first year of the UE-APSAN-Mali project. Modernization of breeding programs using RapidGen and capacity building of young scientists were other important components of the work. ICRISAT’s breeding programs are being modernized to rapidly develop climate-smart crop varieties aligned with market demand. This has enabled breeding programs of the National Agronomic Research Institute (IER) in Mali to start off-season production and, using RapidGen (Rapid Generation Advancement) through irrigation facilities, to carry out two generations of breeding material per year ...

Source: Icrisat