Top Maize Breeders in Southern and Eastern Africa Urge Governments to Speed Approvals of New Crop Varieties Needed by Farmers

Nairobi, Kenya (5 October, 2007)—A statement released by eastern and southern Africa’s leading network of maize breeders, seed producers, and development specialists says that the slow regulatory approval of new, conventionally bred crop varieties is harming regional food security and impeding efforts to eradicate rural poverty. The network warns that countries with slow approval processes are putting their farmers at risk by denying them access to more resilient maize varieties that can withstand periods of drought and resist pests and crop diseases plaguing small-scale farmers in eastern and southern Africa.

“Getting new improved varieties in to the hands of farmers allows them to increase their yield and improve their livelihoods. Countries must have regulatory systems in place that can rapidly test and approve a continuous supply of new commercial varieties,” said Jane Ininda, founder of the Maize Breeders Network (MBNet) and a programme officer for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which funded the meeting.

Maize is the most important cereal crop in sub-Saharan Africa, and with rice and wheat, it is one of the three most important cereal crops in the world. An estimated 50 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa depends on maize as a food staple providing carbohydrate, protein, iron, vitamin B, and minerals. But farmers need varieties that can better cope with an array of diseases (such as turcicum leaf blight and maize streak virus), pests (ear borers and weevils), weeds, and increasingly unpredictable climates. The parasitic witchweed (Striga), for example, causes estimated cereal grain losses of up to US$7 billion annually, adversely affecting the lives of roughly 300 million Africans.

The grant to the University of Ghana, Legon, is for US$4.9 million, and the grant to the University of KwaZulu-Natal is for US$8.1 million. The Legon programme will recruit students from western and central Africa, and the first class will enter in January 2008. The South African program will recruit students from eastern and southern Africa. Both grants will significantly boost agricultural scientific capacity in their respective institutions.

In order to meet these challenges, maize breeders work with local groups of farmers to identify the needed traits—such as resistance to a particular virus—and then painstakingly breed varieties with the desired qualities. The breeding process itself can take 6-8 years, and is followed by a two-to-three year government testing and approval process.

“In some cases, new varieties are not being released to farmers for periods of up to five years,” said Ms. Josephine Okot, managing director of Victoria Seeds Limited-Uganda and a member of MBNet.

Established in 2003, the Maize Breeders Network brings together researchers engaged in plant breeding at national research institutes and leading universities in eastern and southern Africa.

The most recent meeting, held in August 2007, included representatives from Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The MBNet meeting was part of a new effort, spearheaded by AGRA, to develop and distribute seeds suitable for local environments across Africa, and encourage the development of government policies that support these efforts.

“Given the need to quickly turn around Africa's food crisis situation, governments should consider speeding up the release of locally-bred and adaptable crop varieties for farmers. There is real need for urgent action. Farmers can’t wait for years before getting their hands on good crop varieties,” Akin Adesina, AGRA’s vice president of policy and partnerships, told the meeting.

According to the MBNet statement, “Delayed release of new varieties slows commercialization and denies farmers access to new, improved varieties. This problem further aggravates food insecurity and poverty among small-scale farm households.”

The Maize Breeders Network statement calls upon African governments to:

• Find ways to remove barriers and reduce bureaucracy around approval of new seed varieties without sacrificing the legitimate interests of farmers and consumers;
• Streamline and strengthen the process of data collection and analysis by regulators, which may now be slowing variety release; and
• To facilitate continuous interaction among national regulatory agencies within the region to hasten cross-border sharing and testing of maize germplasm (crop genetic resources).

The statement notes that some countries are already making reforms in this direction. Kenyan regulators, for example, can grant a variety “pre-release” status, after just one year of multi-location testing, and full release after two years. Pre-release status allows seed companies and researchers to feel secure in investing in seed bulking (multiplication of quality seeds for planting), in field inspection for Distinctness, Uniformity and Stability (DUS), and in making other preparations for commercialization.

In addition, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) has established working relationships with seed companies, regulatory agencies, farmers, and international plant breeders’ associations. As a result of this work and the government’s innovative approaches to variety approval, 26 new maize varieties have been released in the past five years, all of which have been licensed to private seed companies.

Adesina pointed out that an efficient government approval system will be even more important as farmers struggle to cope with the effects of climate change, including intensified incidences of drought and flooding predicted across large regions of the continent.

“Farmers will need the right crop variety for the right condition and the right location. They will need them quickly to have a chance of adapting to climate change. The time for policy action to speed up variety testing and release is now, since breeders are already in the business of developing crops to deal with climatic changes such as the looming drought crisis,” Adesina said.

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About the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
AGRA is a dynamic partnership working across the African continent to help millions of small-scale farmers and their families lift themselves out of poverty and hunger. AGRA programmes develop practical solutions to significantly boost farm productivity and incomes for the poor while safeguarding the environment. AGRA advocates for policies that support its work across all key aspects of the African agricultural value chain ­from seeds, soil health and water to markets and agricultural education.

AGRA's Board of Directors is chaired by Kofi A Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations. Dr Namanga Ngongi, former Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme, is AGRA's president. With support from The Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK's Department for International Development and other donors, AGRA works across sub-Saharan Africa and maintains offices in Nairobi, Kenya, and Accra, Ghana.