The African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC) on 3rd December 2013, launched the African Plant Breeding Academy to help improve the livelihoods of Africa’s smallholder farmers and their families, reduce hunger and boost Africa’s food supply.

1. TRAINEE ASPIRATIONS AND RELEVANCE OF
CAPACITY BUILDING TO NATIONAL BREEDING
RESEARCH ON INDIGENOUS CROPS FOR
NUTRITION AND FOOD SECURITY IN AFRICA.
ABU, NGOZI EUCHARIA (PhD)
TRAINEE,
AFRICAN PLANT BREEDING ACADEMY (AfPBA)
DEPARTMENT OF PLANT SCIENCE AND BIOTECHNOLOGY,
UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA,
NIGERIA.
ngozi.abu@unn.edu.ng

2. Introduction
• The only way to overcome obstacles inhibiting a
group of people, a nation or a continent in this case
is via capacity building.
• Capacity building in the area of plant breeding is an
investment in the future sustainability of plant
breeding and the resultant achievement of food
security in Africa.
• Equally of similar weight is that it would arm the
trainees of AfPBA with knowledge in combination
of technologies that would enhance breeding for
increased nutrition in order to overcome
micronutrient deficiency via improving the nutrient
composition of our indigenous species.

3. • Food security is a condition that exists when all
people at all times have physical and economic
access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to
meet their dietary needs and food preferences
for an active and healthy life (FAO 1996).
• Africa has more countries with food insecurity
problems than any other region in the world
(FAO, 2004).
• Therefore the need to increase crop yield and
exploit our indigenous species in diverse ways is
an urgent one.

4. Genetics/Plant breeding in relation to yield
• How, in a nut shell, is genetics/plant breeding able to
contribute to food security?
• Genetics is the basic science that can be applied for the
production of improved planting materials.
• The quality of seeds used by farmers determines the
upper limits of the efficiency of all other inputs (fertilizer,
pesticides, implements, management practices etc.).
• There is no agricultural practice that can improve crop
yield beyond the limits set by the quality of seeds used.
The type of seed planted determines the type of harvest
obtained.
• The use of improved seeds ensures greater harvests and
bigger profits for farmers under the same management
systems.
• To achieve this requires geneticists/plant breeder in
different national research programmes.

5. Our (AfPBA Trainees) Aspirations
• The AfPBA trainees aspire to be empowered or
armed with knowledge and technologies that
would help us improve existing crop varieties or
breed new ones that would meet the nutrient
requirements of different age groups.
• The AfPBA students aspires to acquire
knowledge on the breeding technologies that
would successfully develop;
• drought resistant varieties.
• Varieties that would perform maximally on high
acid soils (low pH).

6. • This capacity building programme would foster
net working among the trainees and between
the trainees and resource persons
• We equally aspire to become more conversant
with the tools of biostatistics and get some
expensive analytical packages.
• Armed with proper integration of the ‘old’ and
‘new’ technologies of plant breeding in order to
achieve the desired goal in winning the war
against outright starvation and hidden hunger in
Africa and other developing nations of the world.
•

7. • It would take an African plant breeder or such
researcher resident in Africa to adequately
practice participatory plant breeding to ensure
the generation of varieties acceptable to farmers
and other end users.
• And most importantly, we aspire to finally put
high yielding varieties in the hands of farmers
within a few years as a result of this timely
program

8. Conclusion
• Some of us have heard and read on the pages of
books and journals of so many new technologies
that could serve as tools to bring Africa out of
food insecurity and nutritional problems but our
hands have not handled them.
• We, therefore, aspire to be equipped in
knowledge, facilities, result oriented
collaborations and all other necessary diversities
to enable us exploit our wealth of indigenous
species towards achieving food security and
balanced nutrition in Africa.

9. •Thanks for
Listening

10. •Thanks for
Listening