Commercially sustainable cassava seed systems in Africa

Cassava is an important crop in sub-Saharan Africa for food security, income generation, and industrial development. Business-oriented production systems require reliable supplies of high-quality seed. Major initiatives in Nigeria and Tanzania have sought to establish sustainable cassava seed systems. These include the deployment of new technologies for early generation seed (EGS) production; the promotion of new high-yielding and disease-resistant varieties; the updating of government seed policy to facilitate enabling certification guidelines; the application of ICT tools, Seed Tracker and Nuru AI, to simplify seed system management; and the establishment of networks of cassava seed entrepreneurs (CSEs). CSEs have been able to make profits in both Nigeria (US$ 551–988/ha) and Tanzania (US$1,000 1,500/ha). In Nigeria, the critical demand driver for cassava seed businesses is the provision of new varieties. Contrastingly, in Tanzania, high incidences of cassava brown streak disease mean that there is a strong demand for the provision of healthy seed that has been certified by regulators. These models for sustainable cassava seed system development offer great promise for scaling to other cassava-producing countries in Africa where there is strong government support for the commercialization of the cassava sector.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Legg, James P., Diebiru-Ojo, E.M., Eagle, D., Friedmann, M., Kanju, E., Kapinga, R., Kumar, P. Lava, Lateef, S., Magige, S., Mtunda, K., Yabeja, J.W., Nitturkar, H.
Format:	Book Chapter biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	Springer 2022
Subjects:	cassava, seed production, food security, technology transfer, production, yields, sub-saharan africa,
Online Access:	https://hdl.handle.net/10568/120169 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92022-7_15
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