[ 2014-05-25 ]

Results show Africa can eradicate Striga
Improved technologies being promoted by the
Integrated Striga Management for Africa (ISMA)
project have shown promise that Strigaa parasitic
weed that destroys cereal and legume fieldscan be
eradicated from Africa.

Infesting up to 4 million hectares of land under
maize production in sub-Saharan Africa, Striga
causes farmers yield losses of up to 80%
representing about US$1.2 billion, and affects
approximately 100 million people in the
continent.

In the last three years, the ISMA project has
deployed an integrated approach for managing
Striga while improving soil fertility and reducing
the Striga seed bank for sustainable increases in
crop yields in some selected communities in
Nigeria and Kenya.

Specifically, these included cultural practices
such as intercropping maize with legumes (soybean
and groundnut); crop rotation of maize with
soybean; a 'push-pull' technology that involves
intercropping cereals with Striga-suppressing
Desmodium forage legume; using Striga-resistant
maize and cowpea varieties; using maize varieties
resistant to Imazapyr (IR)a BASF herbicide
(StrigAway®) which is coated on the maize seeds
and which kills the Striga; and adopting Striga
biocontrol technologies which uses a Striga
host-specific fungal pathogen.

Dr David Chikoye, IITA Director for Southern
Africa, said results from the project showed that
the battle against Striga could be won.

'We will eradicate Striga in Africa just as
America did,' he said at the Annual Review and
Planning Meeting of ISMA in Abuja.

IITA Deputy Director General for Research, Dr Ylva
Hillbur, in her opening remarks called for
concerted efforts from partners to tackle the
Striga challenge.

Over 70 stakeholders gathered in Abuja for the
3-day annual event which sought to evaluate the
successes, challenges, and opportunities of the
project, identify gaps, and plan how to implement
the decisions to successfully scale out Striga
management technologies to rural farmers in the
next coming year.

Dr Mel Olouch, ISMA Project Manager, said 'we have
established partners and stakeholder capacity in
Kenya and Nigeria and installed Striga seed
processing facilities in Kenya; awareness is high.
Already, registration of the herbicide has been
achieved in both countries and we expect to
release two IR maize varieties in Nigeria in
2014.''

He said that some of the scaling up approaches
that need to be adopted include the use of
volunteer farmers to reduce costs and increase
ownership, and use of complementary inputs and
empowerment of stakeholders to give farmers the
best technologies.

The Senior Program Officer for Agriculture
Development of the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, Dr Yilma Kebede, looked at future
plans for the project while expressing that the
project is close to reaching farmers and
addressing their concerns/problems due to Striga.

He emphasized that there needs to be concerted
efforts to profile the farmers reached such that
the take-home message will be sustainable for them
in the long run. 'Demonstrations need to be
focused and there is greater need to engage a wide
range of stakeholders in controlling Striga.

The various institutions involved should synergize
to promote the project and scale out to farmers
because no one partner will be responsible for the
success of the technologies in the end,'' he
said.

Project partners include CIMMYT, AATF, icipe,
Bayero University, KNARDA, BSADP, seed and
chemical companies, extension workers, Scientists
and the private sector.

Source - Kofi Adu Domfeh

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