AgroPages-WACCI launches vegetables innovation lab-Agricultural news

The West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI), has launched a Vegetables Innovation Laboratory (VIL) as part of efforts to beef up vegetable production and food security in Ghana and the sub-region.

The VIL thematic areas include genetic improvement, vegetable production and quality control, processing, value chains and socio-economic research, policy research and knowledge management systems.

At the launch in Accra as part of a two-day workshop on Tomato Value Chain in Ghana at the University of Ghana, Professor Eric Y. Danquah, the Director, WACCI/Biotechnology Centre, said the lack of breeders in Ghana was hampering the growth of the tomato industry in Ghana.

He said currently the Crops Research Institute at Fumesua had only two vegetable breeders who lacked expertise in the use of technologies needed to accelerate the development of superior tomato varieties for a changing sub-region and emerging markets for the benefit of Ghanaians.

The workshop, which was organized by the centre in collaboration with Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, brought together 35 renowned research scientists and stakeholders in the tomato industry from across the globe.

It sought to create awareness about the proposed WACCI Vegetable Innovation Lab; explore the possibility of establishing a public-private consortium in West Africa that raises tomato productivity through an integrative research approach underpinned by science and technology and to develop a strategy for accelerating a successful tomato industry in Ghana.

WACCI was established in 2007 as a partnership between the University of Ghana and Cornell University, USA with initial funding from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa to train plant breeders, at the Doctorate level with expertise to improve the indigenous crops that feed the people of the sub-region.