Nairobi, Kenya
October 18, 2007
Ochieng' Ogodo,
SciDev.Net
Kenyan scientists have produced a new variety of pest-resistant
maize that could reduce the country's dependence on imported
maize and boost national food security.
The new maize is a "major plus" in the search for food security
in a continent where the majority of people depend on
agriculture as a source of food and earnings, said Paddy
Likhayo, a research officer at the
Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI).
The maize — the result of collaboration between the Kenya
Agricultural Research Insitute (KARI) and the
International Maize and Wheat
Improvement Center (CIMMYT) — is resistant to the larger
grain borer, a beetle native to Central America that eats and
destroys stored maize throughout Africa.
The beetle is believed to have arrived in East Africa in food
aid shipments during the droughts of the late 1970s and early
1980s, and is responsible for destroying 30 per cent of maize
each year in Kenya, said Likhayo.
This variety "will be of great help to farmers in Kenya and more
than 20 African countries," said CIMMYT's Stephen Mugo, who led
the research project. In the past farmers have had limited
options for controlling this pest, he said.
KARI announced their research results last month (September).
The pest-resistance characteristic originally comes from a
Caribbean maize variety stored in CIMMYT's germplasm bank — a
collection of 25,000 native maize varieties.
Using conventional plant breeding techniques, the scientists
crossed this variety with maize already adapted to conditions
found in eastern Africa, such as heavy rain, to produce the new,
pest-resistant maize.
When exposed to the grain borers at the KARI research station in
Kiboko, Kenya, the new variety resisted the pest better than any
previous variety.
KARI maize breeders plan to nominate the variety for national
field trials, to be conducted by Kenya's Plant Health
Inspectorate Services. KARI expects the trials to take 1–3 years
to complete.
Other news
from the Kenya
Agricultural Research Institute (KARI)
Other news from
the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) |
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