By Iddi Yire, GNA
Accra, July 21, GNA – The West Africa Centre
for Crop Improvement (WACCI), University of Ghana, over the weekend graduated
15 quality plant breeders and seven seed scientists as part efforts to boost
food and nutrition security in Africa.
WACCI runs one of the largest PhD programmes
in Plant Breeding globally.
The ceremony, which took place at the Great
Hall of the University of Ghana, saw 15 PhD students in Plant Breeding and
seven Master of Philosophy (MPhil) students in Seed Science and Technology
graduating.
This brings to 81 and 14 students in PhD
Plant Breeding and Seed Science and Technology respectively who have graduated
out of the WACCI programme since its inception in 2007.
The 15 PhD students comprised four females
and 11 males from seven countries including: Ghana, South Sudan, Nigeria,
Niger, Senegal, Togo, and Uganda.
This year’s graduating class of the MPhil
programme includes two females and five males from three countries – Ghana,
Mali, and Senegal.
The graduating students were sponsored under
the following projects and organisations: the West Africa Agricultural
Productivity Programme, Intra-ACP, USAID, Purdue – Sorghum and Millet
Innovation Lab, Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, the
DAAD-Germany, African Union-European Union project and the World Bank.
Professor Eric Y. Danquah, the Founding
Director, WACCI, speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sideline of the
graduation, who congratulated the graduates for their sterling performance also
urged them to use the knowledge they had acquired from the University of Ghana to
transform Africa’s agriculture.
He said WACCI’s graduates had become game
changers in many breeding programmes in the sub-region and would be the cadres
who would impact food and nutrition security in Africa in the decade ahead.
“Africa is changing, bringing new challenges
that must be addressed if we are to live in a world without hunger, food
insecurity and malnutrition. As a major step to overcoming the challenges that
resource poor farmers face in Africa, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
(AGRA) provided seed funds for the establishment of the WACCI as a
semi-autonomous institution in the University of Ghana in 2007,” he stated.
“Today, WACCI has evolved into the leading
World Bank Africa Centres of Excellence (ACE) for postgraduate education in
Plant Breeding on the continent. Funded through a financial agreement between
the Government of Ghana and the International Development Association, the ACE
project aims to improve the quality of postgraduate education in selected
universities through regional specialization and collaboration.”
He said following a successful first phase
of implementation, WACCI won a second phase grant of $ 5.5 million bringing to
$ 13.5 million total commitments from the World Bank for the period 2014-2024
for the improvement of the quality, quantity and development impact of
postgraduate education at WACCI.
He said WACCI graduates have published 150
research papers and released about 60 crop varieties such as CRI-AGRA Sp09
(sweet potato), Solo-Gold (Sweet potato), Mbofara (Sweet potato), Asempa (Sweet
potato), NAGODE (Maize), AGRILA (Maize), CRI-Apraku (Maize), AburoLegon
(Maize), Akuafo Aburo (Maize), IKMR18001 (Pearl millet) and IKMR18009 (Pearl
millet).
He said notable characteristics of some of
these varieties include desirable morphological features, tolerance to low
nitrogen soils, tolerance to pest and diseases, high beta carotene content,
early maturing and higher yielding compared to existing varieties.
He said the adoption rate of newly developed
varieties by farmers’ ranges from eight-40 per cent; adding that in adoption
these farmer-preferered varieties were expected to increase over time as the
released varieties were new introductions to farmers.
Speaking to the GNA, three of the WACCI PhD
graduates Dr Leander Dede Melomey, Ghana; Dr Saba Baba Mohammed, Nigeria and Dr
Elisabeth Diatta, Senegal, expressed their gratitude to God, their sponsors and
the WACCI for supporting them to achieve their goal.
The trio promised to use the knowledge and
skills they had acquired at the University of Ghana to help ensure food and
nutrition security in Africa.
Dr Melomey, whose research work centred on
tomato, dubbed “Development of High Yielding Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)
Lines with Resistance to Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Disease (TYLCD)|”, said tomato
was a very important vegetable crop in Ghana; stating that her research was
very critically to finding a lasting solution to the tomato yellow leaf curl
disease in the country.
GNA
