Why we developed drought resistant crops – Prof Izge

Usman Adamu Izge is a Professor of Agriculture with specialty in genetic and crop breeding at Federal University Dutse, Jigawa State. In this interview, he speaks on why he carried out research on breeding a drought resistant variety of groundnut. Excerpts: Tell us about your research on drought resistant crop varieties? I have conducted research […]

Usman Adamu Izge is a Professor of Agriculture with specialty in genetic and crop breeding at Federal University Dutse, Jigawa State. In this interview, he speaks on why he carried out research on breeding a drought resistant variety of groundnut. Excerpts:

Tell us about your research on drought resistant crop varieties?
I have conducted research on groundnut and maize with the aim of breeding a drought resistant crop from the two crops. I began my research on groundnut during my masters degree where I ventured into reproducing different types of groundnut varieties by screening them to see how they react to moisture stress. I have been able to find out that some of these crops take shorter days to mature for harvest; this is very important considering areas where rainfall does not last more than three months. We have different ecological zones in Nigeria, for instance places like Borno, Yobe, Katsina, Kano and Jigawa which fall under Sahel savannah and Sudan savannah ecology.  This informed my decision to go into research for breeding a drought tolerant crop so that farmers from these areas will get appreciable yield. You know, literatures have shown that the Sahel and Sudan savannah are drought prone areas therefore, it becomes necessary to breed crops that can mature for harvest within some days.
Is there any difference in the period it takes between the local and the hybrid drought tolerant crop to mature?
There are groundnut varieties that mature for harvest between 80 to 130 days but the issue is in Sahel savannah, you hardly get an area where rainfall lasts for this period. So what we do as breeders is to breed crops that will mature within a short period of time like within 50 to 70 days. If you compare the two, the variety that takes shorter days is the most suitable for the ecological zone that we are talking about.
Local farmers place high premium on tonnage per harvest, does the drought resistant crop give high yield than the local variety?
The yield of the drought resistant is not as much as for the crops that will take longer days but there is an appreciable percentage of about 80 percent of yield.
Looking at the low yield of the drought tolerant crop, didn’t you encounter challenges while introducing the new crop to the local farmers?
Most of our local farmers are always skeptical in adopting new innovations but what we do in breeding is we grow our crop side by side the local framers crop.  When our crop matures for harvest within short time while theirs take longer time they easily become convinced. When they realized our crop performed better than theirs by the following year they will adopt ours without much questions. And if there is early seizure of rain, they also realized ours still gives yield because it matured early.  Drought tolerant tolerates early seizure of rain while theirs will not.