IITA launches new project on cassava weed management

The project is seeking to find solutions to the labour intensive weeding usually performed by women and children and to increase productivity for 125,000 Nigerian cassava farming families. The project has the potential to serve as a livelihood transformation model for all cassava producing states in Nigeria.Cassava is generally grown by smallholder farmers, who appreciate […]

The project is seeking to find solutions to the labour intensive weeding usually performed by women and children and to increase productivity for 125,000 Nigerian cassava farming families.
The project has the potential to serve as a livelihood transformation model for all cassava producing states in Nigeria.
Cassava is generally grown by smallholder farmers, who appreciate its tolerance of drought and poor soils. However, its prospects in Nigeria, the world’s largest producer of cassava, are being threatened by insufficiently developed weed management practices.
Hand and hoe weeding are the predominant means of weed control practices on smallholder cassava farms and take 50 to 80 percent of the total labour budget of cassava growers with women contributing more than 90 percent of the labour and 69 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 14 forced to leave school to perform weeding.
Project Manager, Dr Alfred Dixon said: “Weeding requires up to 500 hours of labour, per hectare, to prevent economic losses in cassava roots in Nigeria. This burden compromises the women’s responsibilities and the children’s education, and Nigerian farmers will continue to record low yields until weed control in cassava is improved. Farm families cannot plant a larger area than they can weed.
“Addressing the complex issues of hunger and poverty is no easy task, and so we see the value in engaging in new research and deploying our best resources to ensure that smallholder farmers have access to the best innovations to increase their agricultural productivity and improve the nutrition of their families.”
The ultimate aim of this research is to develop a state-of-the-art weed management practices by combining improved cassava varieties with proper planting dates, plant populations, and plant nutrition options. These particular practices may include the use of herbicides all of which currently meet globally accepted conventions and safety thresholds appropriate for smallholder farmers to make weed control in cassava more efficient. Any herbicide activity will be part of a comprehensive strategy of effective agronomic practices that are collectively striving to make weed management more effective and sustainable.
The IITA-managed project is supported by a US$7.7million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and involves the National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI), Umudike, University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, government representatives, international cassava scientists, the donor community and the private sector.
Dr Friday Ekeleme, the project’s Principal Investigator said: “The project will also offer policymakers better information on modern, relevant, and appropriate weed management technologies. This information could be used to expand the project to 5 million farm families in Nigeria.”