Yams grown in air to reduce diseases in seed cuttings

A successful cultivation of yams in the air by researchers will reduce the chances of cuttings used as seeds for planting having diseases.

Usually, yams that for ages have been a root crop get attacked by pests and viruses which lead to diseases. These yams planted in the ground are also the ones cut and prepared as seeds for planting.

Most of these harbour diseases that may not be evident at the time of planting but manifest in the growing yam, therefore reducing farmers’ productivity.

By December 2013, researchers at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) announced they had successfully grown seed yams in the air using aeroponics technology.

In preliminary trials, Norbert Maroya, project manager, Yam Improvement for Incomes and Food Security in West Africa (YIIFSWA) project at IITA, together with a team of scientists successfully propagated yam by directly planting vine cuttings in Aeroponics System. These are boxes in which the yams are planted to produce mini-tubers in the air.

Aeroponics System is the process of growing plants in an air or mist environment without the use of soil or an aggregate medium. The technology is widely used by commercial potato seed producers in Eastern Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, etc.), and Southern Africa (Mozambique, Malawi, etc.), but successfully growing yam on aeroponics is a novelty for rapidly multiplying the much needed clean seed yam tubers in large quantities.

“With this approach, we are optimistic that farmers will begin to have clean seed yams for better harvest,” Maroya said recently.

Preliminary results showed that vine rooting in Aeroponics System had at least 95 percent success rate compared with vine rooting in carbonised rice husk with a maximum rate of 70 percent, according to a press statement by IITA. Rooting time was much shorter in aeroponics.

Aeroponics is coming at an opportune time for African farmers. Traditionally, seed yam production is expensive and inefficient. Farmers save about 25 to 30 percent of their harvest for planting the same area in the following season, meaning less money in their pockets.

Moreover, these saved seeds are often infested with pathogens that significantly reduce farmers’ yield year after year.

However, with an established Aeroponics System for seed yam propagation at the premises of an interested private investor, seed company or humanitarian non-governmental organisation; yam producers can have access to clean seed yams.

By: OLUYINKA ALAWODE