••• To collaborate with CARD on rice seed breeding

The West African Agricultural Productivity Programme Nigeria (WAAPP-Nigeria) and the Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD) has expressed readiness to collaborate on rice development in Nigeria especially in the area of rice seed breeding.
Both organisations revealed this recently when delegations from CARD came on a courtesy visit to WAAPP Nigeria office in Abuja, recently.

Speaking on the achievement of WAAPP Nigeria in the development of improved Rice seed which has turned out to be very successful in collaboration of the National Agricultural Seed council (NASC), the National Coordinator, Dr James Ocheme Apochi, said farmers are happy to produce more yields compared to the previous production before the intervention of WAAPP-Nigeria.

He assured that WAAPP will be ready to collaborate with viable organisations like CARD once the second phase of the project kick off.
Sharing the Rice Seed Concept Note produced by CARD with the management of WAAPP, the Regional Consultant, Mr Michael Azebeokhai Nasamu, said CARD has provided several countries with a National Rice Development Strategy (NRDS), a document that can provide solutions for farmers facing challenges in planting Rice, adding that Nigeria Rice Development Strategy was subsumed into the current Rice transformation agenda action plan.

He stated further that CARD is good at creating strategies to help reduce problems that may arise in the Rice Seed sector and that collaborating with WAAPP in the second phase could boost the agency in doing more and even expanding to other Projects.
He said: “All this success were possible because CARD was able to pick two sectors which is the seed and mechanization.  In some country it is seed while in some others its mechanization. That of Nigeria happens to be seed.

We found out that the Rice value chain is a very long chain and if anyone wants to make an appreciable impact one has to focus on few areas. Since CARD is not a financial contributor but a policy making agency.”
CARD focal point officer, Mr Mundi Dadet said that CARD is into intervention in Rice value chain but that there are challenges as breeders have not being able to produce breeder’s seed constantly. Expressing hope that the organisation would be assisted in the implementation of two concept note in the second phase of WAAPP.

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