A five-year project seeking to boost ongoing efforts to deliver high-yielding, disease resistant, and superior cooking banana varieties to increase food security and improve incomes of smallholder farmers in the Great Lakes region will be officially launched today, 20 May 2015 in Kampala, Uganda.
The project will be officially launched by the country’s Cabinet Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, Hon. Tress Bucyanayandi (MP), in an event that brings together all project partners from five continents. Thereafter, the partners will fine-tune the project’s implementation plan.
Banana is a very important crop in the Great Lakes region where it is both a staple crop and a source of income for millions of smallholder farmers. However, its yield is very low at only 9% of its potential. The production is greatly hampered by a myriad of pests (weevils and nematodes) and diseases including Fusarium wilt, bacterial wilt, and black Sigatoka.
The project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and led by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in collaboration with the Ugandan National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO) and the Agricultural Research Institute (ARI) of Tanzania, will boost national banana breeding efforts to develop superior East African Highland cooking bananas―locally known as Matooke in Uganda and Mchare in Tanzania.
