WAAPP to produce 250m fast growing fingerlings, brood stock in one year

The West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP) in Nigeria says it will produce 250 million fast growing fingerlings as well as high quality brood stock in one year for farmers.

Prof. Damian Chikwendu, WAAPP’s National Project Coordinator, said this while addressing newsmen on the sidelines of a stakeholders meeting on Tuesday in Abuja.

According to him, the programme is also working to ensure that it helps promote some newly introduced agricultural technology among farmers.

“We have about 120 communities we are working with while the research institutes and colleges are working with some secondary schools as well.

“We are trying to promote interest in agriculture among students in secondary schools.

“We are also working with research institutes to multiply breeder seeds, improve foundation seeds as well as working with the private sector to multiply certified seeds.

“We are also working with the research institutes and universities to multiply fast growing fingerlings and high quality brood stock; our target for fingerlings for one year is to provide 250 million fingerlings.

“The seeds and fingerlings that are being produced are for farmers and they are getting them already.

Chikwendu said that the programme was also working toward popularising all local genetic materials.

He cited the `Shika brown’, a layer breed of chicken developed by the National Animal Production Research Institute as an example, saying that the “brown parent stocks” of the new breed would be reproduced with the parent stock and day old chicks distributed to farmers for adoption.

He added that WAAPP was strengthening the research system to be able to contribute towards an improved sector.

NAN reports that WAAPP is an ECOWAS initiative coordinated at the sub-regional level by the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development.

It aims to make agriculture more productive and sustainable and also to support sub-regional integration.

It also helps to provide enabling conditions for Nigeria to cooperate with the West African sub-region in technology generation and dissemination.

In Nigeria, it was approved by the World Bank and is being coordinated by the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN), an agency of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

In his speech, Dr Abdoulaye Toure, the World Bank Regional Task Team Leader in West Africa urged countries to ensure speedy adoption of technologies and new approaches to development.

He explained that the idea of the programme was to share innovations among countries to help develop the sector as well as food security and reduce poverty among West African countries.

“Each country has a key commodity to focus on while working on the other commodities.

“And all the technologies that are developed in other countries are made available to other members.

“Because if you want to transform agriculture, you need to make sure that the technology generation side is strong as well as the adoption.

“Also, to address the issue of not only food security but also reducing poverty, you need to also address the issue of the small-scale farmers.”

In his response, Prof. Baba-Yusuf Abubakar, the ARCN Executive Secretary, said that WAAPP programmes were in line with the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA).

“Whatever we are doing under the WAAP programme has to add value to the ATA.

“WAAPP has supported some of our research institutes to produce the foundation seeds that eventually go to the National Seeds Council and then eventually to the farmers.

“Whatever result we get, we should be able to have spillover effects so that we can use the results in other countries to avoid duplication.”