Rwanda banks on seed multipliers to increase cassava production

It requires 'quick multiplication of cassava clean seeds' as part of efforts to scale up new disease-resistant cassava varieties on about 200,000 hectares that are used for cassava growing in Rwanda, researchers have said. Athanase Nduwumuremyi, the Coordinator of Roots and Tubers Programme and Cassava breeder at Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resource Development Board (RAB) said that the efforts by seed multipliers are needed considering that many farmers are still harvesting lower yields using traditional seeds. "The average of cassava production is 15 tonnes per hectare due to using traditional seeds that have diseases yet model farmers using the cassava clean seed are harvesting over 35 tonnes per hectare," he explained. Figures show that some farmers are still even harvesting below the potential yield. Rwanda currently produces around three million tonnes of cassava as average production and scaling up new varieties could increase to about eight million tonnes per year with ...