Niger State Govt & Traditional Rulers, Support Mass Cultivation of Jathropha

The government and people of Niger State are working to flag off an intense campaign for the mass cultivation of Jathropha trees in the region. To this end, the state government has set up a five-man committee of commissioners to advise government on the role to play in the regional workshop scheduled for Minna, next month.
Governor of Niger State, Muazu Babangida Aliyu, who set up the committee, directed the panel to mobilize farmers in the state to go into mass cultivation of the plant because of its economic value. He said that establishment of a Jatropha refinery in Northern Nigeria would be the answer to the region’s economic problems because the refinery will be able to produce diesel while its by-products would also fetch for the region unlimited funds.

The planning committee took time out to pay a sensitization visit to Emir of Minna Dr Umar Farouq and that of Suleja Malam Awal Ibrahim. The two monarchs assured the committee that their emirates will join in the mass cultivation of the plant. Dr Umar Farouq Bahago directed all the districts and village heads in the emirate to cultivate at least one hectare of the plant while Malam Awal Ibrahim pledged a minimum of ten hectares. They also said they will sponsor some farmers in the emirates to workshop so that they would not be left behind.

Chairman of the planning committee Malam Garba Attaihiru revealed that aside from being an energy source, mass cultivation of the Jathropa plant will protect the environment against desert encroachment. The plant could also be used for the production of antiseptic soaps and antibiotic drugs.
Emir of Minna, Dr Umar Farouq Bahago and his counterpart in Suleja, Alhaji Mohammed Awal Ibrahim, directed their subjects to participate actively in the workshop which will attract participants from the 19 northern states. The workshop will hold at the convocation square of the Niger State College of Education, Minna.

LandMark University to Ignite Agrarian Revolution – Oyedepo

Chancellor of Landmark University and founder of Living Faith Church Worldwide, Bishop David Oyedepo, has said that the University is poised to ignite an agrarian revolution in order to attain food security for the country and continent. The Bishop was speaking during the press briefing of the first convocation of Landmark University in Omu-Aran,Kwara State.

The Bishop said that in order to tackle Nigeria’s challenge of low enrollment in agricultural programmes, the university authorities carry out enlightenment visits to secondary schools and also offer scholarship programmes for students of agriculture.
He also said the school’s curriculum makes farm practice mandatory for all students adding that most of what the university consumed as agricultural products were produced by the university. The school also markets its produce to the outside community in order to generate more income.
He said food availability, affordability and security are national issues that could serve as a solution to all other critical challenges facing the nation. “What the people of the country need this time around is abundant food. Once this is done high rate of unemployment will be reduced,” he said.
The chancellor called on Nigerian leaders to redesign various policies to develop agriculture as this will reduce high rate of unemployment and insecurity in the country.

Agri-entertainment in Nigeria

Agri-entertainment has been referred to at "Agritainment" and people who entertain at these agriculture based functions have been referred to as "agritainers" since 2008 with the founding of the Texas Crossroads Cowboy Gathering.

Agritainment includes not only farm and ranch tours, but also events such as cowboy music and poetry gatherings. The genres of cowboy music, cowboy poetry, and cowboy storytelling have their roots and material based upon the agrarian lifestyle of ranching.
Agri-entertainment and agritourism refer to consumer‑focused forms of agriculture, in which farms supplement (or replace) their traditional income from the sale of crops to wholesale markets by offering a variety of "entertainment farming" options.
These agri-entertainment options include: pick-your-own operations, pumpkin patches, corn mazes, farm stores, agricultural festivals, and educational activities.
There are three aspects to agri-tourism. The farms have:

Usually, the farms are themed, such as Halloween-related activities (pumpkin patches and corn mazes) or historic recreations (a working farm or mill from the 19th century). Things to see and do are often offered free, but farms still derive a substantial profit by selling refreshments and souvenirs to visitors.

Chicken Poultry: Enugu Deputy Governor Faces Impeachment For operating in Govt Quarters

Political henpecking took a more interesting turn yesterday as Deputy Governor of Enugu State got an impeachment notice from lawmakers in the state. 22 out of the 24 members of the Enugu State House of Assembly signed a notice of impeachment against the Deputy Governor for, among other things, contravening the February 2013 resolution which prohibits the “main maintenance and operation of a commercial livestock and poultry farms within residential neighborhoods in Enugu Metropolis in promotion of public health standards’.
The lawmakers say Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State had on two different occasions directed the Deputy Governor to relocate the commercial poultry farm out of the premises of his official residential quarters , which is also within the general premises of the Government House Enugu and adjacent to the Governor’s office but his Deputy had ignored both directives.
According to them, the Deputy Governor insisted that he would not relocate his commercial poultry farm from the premises of his official residential quarters, an act which they described as “discourteous” and in “utter disregard of the office of the governor”.

“When the government through the appropriate Ministries and departments relocated the birds and cleared the premises of the noxious stench emanating therefrom, the Deputy Governor wrongfully deployed the resources and powers of his office as deputy governor to invite the press and openly castigated the government and her officials, thereby impugning and denigrating the authority and office of the governor and embarrassing the government,” they said.
(Chicken Poultry: Enugu Deputy Governor Faces Impeachment For operating in Govt Quarters). We await further developments on this story.

Future Millionaires & Billionaires of Nigeria will come from Agriculture – Adesina

Nigeria’s future millionaires and billionaires will make their money from agriculture. This assertion was made recently by the country’s Agriculture Minister, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina while speaking at the first convocation of Landmark University held on the school’s main campus in Omu-Aran, Kwara State. Adesina posited that the bulk of these nouveau riche class will be made up of young persons adept at creating jobs for millions and bringing hope to rural communities all across the country.

However, the minister said for this to happen, young persons must begin to find ways to key into the ongoing transformation in the agricultural sector. “Nigeria faces a rapidly ageing farming population” he stated, while placing the average age of the Nigerian farmer at 60 years. The minister further enjoined young people to stop seeing agriculture as a tool for development but as a business. “Presently, Nigeria is said to be losing N1.2 trillion every year to poorly developed and inefficient agricultural sector. These inefficiencies could be eliminated if we have young people who will get into the sector and change the face of how things are done”.

To this end, Dr Adesina noted that the Federal Government is in the process of rolling out the Youth Employment in Agriculture Program to develop 750,000 young commercial farmers and agribusiness entrepreneurs, mostly agricultural graduates, within five years. “They will make our agriculture more productive and competitive”, the Minister pointed out, while enjoining the graduands to prepare to be part of this drive.
According to Dr. Adesina, the nation’s universities must develop programmes that will produce young people “with broad set of skills to drive and manage the agricultural sector”. To this end, the Minister suggested that universities collaborate across faculties and develop new programs sharply focused on producing leaders and managers for the agriculture and agro-allied industries. “Today’s agriculture graduate must be well versed in technical skills, as well as economics, business management, business law, trade and intellectual property rights and only through cross faculty programs can this be achieved,” Adesina affirmed.
He cited various examples of how youths can key into the transformation agenda including the well thought out deployment of technology in the fertilizer distribution scheme of the Federal Government which led to a cut-off of rent seekers who were the main beneficiaries pre-2012 – “all of this was done within 90 days”, he reminded his listeners pointing out that this was a feat unique to Nigeria. In his words, “Nigeria is the first country in Africa, and in the world, to develop the electronic wallet system for reaching farmers with subsidized farm inputs on mobile phones”.
To fit into the change circle, the minister noted, the student needs to study and understand how the agricultural sector works. “Universities need to be well connected to the agribusiness and agro-allied industries to develop innovations and technologies to drive the transformation of the agricultural sector”. “The business sector needs universities to become centers of excellence for technology and business incubation” Dr Adesina further enjoined, while adding that “technology and business incubation centers should be established in universities to help small and medium sized agricultural businesses to thrive.”

The lecture, which was delivered with the Chancellor of the University, Bishop David Oyedepo and other members of the Governing Council of Landmark University in attendance, ended with the Minister encouraging the graduating students to “…invest in agriculture and be part of this great future…”

AMAZING FACTS ABOUT ANIMALS THAT YOU PROBABLY NEVER KNEW….. FACTS ABOUT SHEEP

• Sheep have very good memories. They can remember at least 50 individual sheep and humans for years. They do this by using a similar neural process and part of the brain that humans use to remember.
• Sheep have been shown to display emotions, some of which can be studied by observing the position of their ears.
• Contrary to popular misconception, sheep are extremely intelligent animals capable of problem solving. They are considered to have a similar IQ level to cattle and are nearly as clever as pigs.
• Like various other species including humans, sheep make different vocalization to communicate different emotions. They also display and recognize emotion by facial expressions.
• Sheep are known to self-medicate when they have some illnesses. They will eat specific plants when ill that can cure them.
• Sheep are precocial (highly independent from birth) and gregarious (like to be in a group).
• Female sheep (ewes) are very caring mothers and form deep bonds with their lambs that can recognize them by their call (bleat) when they wander too far away.
• Wild sheep tend to be larger than domesticated species, the largest (Argali) being 1.2m tall. They also have longer horns which they use to defend themselves from predators.
• Egyptians believed that sheep were sacred. They even had them mummified when they died, just like humans.
• The ancient Sumerians (4000 – 2000 BC), who are thought to have developed the first form of writing (Cuneiform script), immortalized sheep in the form of gods in their religion.
• Sheep are one of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac. Sheep are seen to represent righteousness, sincerity, gentleness, and compassion.
• The meat of sheep is widely eaten by people across the world. Sheep milk is also drunk and used to make other products such as cheese

As Agri-Funding Takes Centre Stage, African Governments Encouraged To Subsidise Insurance For Smallholder Farmers

Speaking at the Finance for Agriculture Conference held in Kenya recently, Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina urged governments to restructure insurance programmes so that farmers can readily gain access to financing from private stakeholders.
Fear of risks by investors was identified as one of the key reasons small holder farmers are not getting access to credit. This risk will be greatly reduced if insurance policies are in place to mitigate them. Several speakers at the conference agreed that insurance would make farmers a better risk for lenders. Yet, a report presented at the event showed premiums charged are too high hence locking out many small holder farmers.
Dr Adesina, therefore, encouraged governments to take the lead in providing subsidized insurance programmes for farmers. “Do not just sit on public money, use it to leverage on private resources,” he told delegates.

Director for Foundation for World Agriculture and Rurality Jean-Christophe Debar

Director for Foundation for World Agriculture and Rurality Jean-Christophe Debar agrees. He said affordable insurance premiums in Africa can be as high as 10 per cent which is a heavy burden for farmers especially those doing it on a small scale. Governments were urged to introduce policies that would guarantee farmers single digit interest rates, as well easy taxation to grow agribusiness.

William Samoei Ruto

While opening the conference, Deputy President William Ruto of Kenya urged African Central Banks and Finance Policy Makers to step in and facilitate growth of the agricultural sector. “It’s time for African policy makers to call a spade a spade, do the right thing and grow modern agriculture,” he said. African countries were urged to embrace warehouse receipt funding method which would help farmers tap finance faster from private institutions

Scientists use satellite images to understand land use among farmers over time

A group of researchers have been burning the midnight oil are using data collected over more than fifty years to determine the factors that result in positive and negative land use change through understanding how soil, water and biodiversity are maintained in some areas thus managing ecosystems.

East African landscape has been changing with agricultural production impacting on the biodiversity on one of the world's most diverse ecosystems and affecting areas traditionally used by pastoralists and wildlife. Understanding the factors behind land use changes in East Africa has been the objective of a network of international researchers, known as LUCID (Land Use Change, Impacts and Dynamics), who are using data collected over more than fifty years to determine the factors that result in positive and negative land use change. Understanding how soil, water and biodiversity are maintained in some areas and not others is of interest not only to the LUCID scientists but to environmental projects elsewhere in Africa and Asia.

The impact of socioeconomic changes on the environment is often ignored in land use and biodiversity research, says Jennifer Olson, network co-coordinator, even though it is critical to understanding how land use can be improved. Working in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, LUCID researchers compare old and new data, using aerial photographs and satellite images to see changes over time in land use. Distinct from other projects, five decades of data identifying changes in land use is then integrated with ecological data (from soil sampling and wildlife/plant surveys) and socioeconomic data (from personal interviews and population counts).

Whether an area is maintained or degraded in terms of soil, water and biodiversity is dependent on a number of factors including inherent soil quality, local climate, population and political stability. Migration is also "a really important reason for the conversion of land from more natural vegetation to crops," stresses Olson. It is happening especially in densely populated areas and where young people have insufficient land for their families, she adds. Consequently, a greater number of people are moving out into the more marginal areas, leading after a few years to severe soil degradation which is difficult to reverse.

This is a particular problem in Kenya, says Olson, where the good land is already cultivated. People move into the drier areas and manage to get some food from the land while supplementing their income with off-farm work, but usually at the expense of the natural environment.

In Uganda, where it is generally not as dry, Olson reports that some areas, such as the former cattle corridor in the central and southern regions, which have yet to be put under cultivation, are at risk; LUCID projections suggest it is only a matter of time. In Tanzania, two predominant land use changes are the rapid conversion of pastoral areas to crop land, and large areas of the miombo woodland being cleared for tobacco and other crops.

In some areas of East Africa, however, environmental resources have been improved by people engaging in extensive agriculture. In all three countries, Olson and her team found that in areas that are more 'hooked up' to markets and where the soil quality and rainfall is adequate, farmers can derive enough income from their farms to invest the time and resources needed to institute soil erosion prevention practices, apply chemical fertilisers and/or use manure.

As a result, says Olson, soil fertility in some areas has started improving. Soil fertility has also been boosted when, in the past, governments stepped in to subsidise chemical fertiliser. However, Olson points out that "to start to use manure in a systematic way that makes a difference is quite an effort."

After some years of neglect, governments and NGO's in East Africa are beginning to pay more attention to agriculture. And in areas where the land is marginal, Olson sees agricultural extension programmes and off-farm jobs as critical to providing farmers with the means to replenish soil fertility. Olson also lists community land use planning - which involves preservation of some forest and pasture land for community use - poverty reduction, and family planning programmes as keys to halting land degradation.

How to Start Pig Farming in Nigeria and Grow to Giant Piggery

Piggery is another aspect of farming in Nigeria that is making smart investors huge money on daily basis. If you are into this pig farming, you sure wouldn't lack money again for the rest of your life. The reason is because Pig meet is in high demand in Nigeria and sells very very fast in the market. Another reason is that Pig reproduce in large number and grows very fast.

A single pig gives birth to as much as 15 piglets at a time, making it one of the most reproducing mammal in the world. Baby pigs is known as shoat, farrow or piglet. Male pigs are referred to as the boar while females are sows. As a group they are called a herd or drove. 

Despite the huge profitability of Piggery, many Nigerian are still overlooking this goldmine because of ignorance of how it works. While some don't just get the fact that it is a big business -  many who engage in it do it as part time business but if you can engage in this business fully, you are sure going to smile to the bank very soon.
 A fully grown Pig goes for as high as N30,000 depending on the weight. Now Imagine for a year you are able to rear hundred to maturity, you will be making  N3 Million from the sales. If you can take it higher - lets say like 2,000 pigs in year, you will be talking of N60 Million hereConsidering how fast pigs reproduces, it wouldn't be a very much big deal to come up with 100 pigs in a year. Then, how do you go about setting up your pig farm? Below are the important guides

1. Secure a Breeding Ground — Depending on how you plan to feed your pigs, a plot of land may just be okay for small scale starting but if you can acquire a large farm land (from 5 acres) that will be better so that your pig can graze in the open and retire to the pen where they'd continue feeding and playing. Land is your biggest investment in this business. Once you have it, you're half way done.

Look for land in a rural area where you can get it cheaper. 1acre of land in a rural area will be from N200,000 x how many you want. Do your stuffs there and transport your goods to the town. Some butcher will even be coming to your farm to buy, saving you cost of transportation.

 It is good to raise pigs in pasture by leaving them occasionally to root around in the fields where they can find plants to eat, and that can only be achieved when you have large enough farm land (Pasture Ground) to cater for this. As they mature, you take care so that they do not wander away.

Standard Pig Pen for Big Farmers

2. Build Standard Pens — Big pen is important if you don't want your pigs to injure themselves. A good and specious pen is also important to keep the pigs healthy and free from diseases and contamination. Proper drainage is needed too to avoid water becoming stagnant in your pen which could attract insects and other harmful pets to harm your pigs.

To avoid your pigs getting overly dirty, you need to build a water pool where they can play, swim as pigs likes swimming, and cool themselves which is important to their well being. Changing the water and refilling the pool as frequently as possible will ensure that they are clean all the time. If you are keeping them outdoor, shelter should be build for them.

3. Buy Healthy Piglets — To ensure healthy farm, you need to make sure the piglets you are about to start your farm with are health. Buy from trusted source and make sure the ones you are buying has history of vaccination.

Buy as much as you wants to start with but don't start with too many. It is advisable to start with small number and increase gradually. This way, you will be able to learn the rope and you grow and anything go wrong at the initial stage, your risk will be minimal.

4. Talk to Veterinary Doctor — You need the services of vet doctors for regular check up and vaccination as well as feeding and nutrition advice. Pigs generally eats what human being eat and doe not present much worries when it comes to feed.

5. Employ Workers — Employ 4 - 5 persons if your pigs are up to 100. If  you are starting on a smaller scale, you may need lesser number of worker 1 - 2 workers who will be assisting in the cleaning of the pigs and the pens, feeding the pigs and making sure they are well behaved and other things necessary.

6. Arrange for Feeding —  Just like human being,  Pigs eat a wide variety of foods, anything human can eat, they can eat. Like human being as well, they need balanced diet such as fibre, energy, protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals to thrive. Feed will take the major chunk of your spending in the farm.

Pigs, like all animals, must have constant access to clean fresh drinking water. As well as tipping the trough to make a wallow, pigs will also stand in the water trough and wash their dirty faces in it, so it needs to be checked regularly, cleaned out and refilled. Galvanised troughs are robust and easy to clean, and not too easy for the pigs to tip over.  Automatic drinkers are available but aren’t half as much fun for the pigs.

Good Pig Feeding Trough

Put all these in place and you are as good as having started your business.  There is nothing a good as being in business you are sure of profit; Pig farming is one of such business. All you need to do is to feed and take care of them. Do that proper and watch them multiply in three fold.

ARMTI urges Govt to examine packaging materials

The Deputy Director, Directorate of General Administration, Agricultural and Rural Management Institute (ARMTI), Dr. Ademola Adeyemo has called for implementation of a policy which would examine packaging materials to avoid contamination.
Dr Ademola the authorities should focus on the regulation on packaging, with particular attention to the migration of chemicals from packaging and food contact materials, adding that there are possibilities that contaminated chemicals in plastics used in food and food packaging could affect consumers.

The ARMTI Deputy Director said there should be policy directives on how to use materials that come in contact with foods. He said the government should spell out standards on new packaging and recycled ones, adding that companies should step up technologies that they are using and demonstrate their readiness to ensure safety in the production process.
He said agencies should consider other avenues to address the issue of contamination, ranging from the provisions that are already in place under the food standards code, to regulatory, co-regulatory and self-regulatory options which are not yet in place.

New Weed Control Techniques Responsible For Bauchi Maize Boom – Gital

The Bauchi State Agricultural Development Programme (BSADP) Manager, Dr. Iliyasu Gital has stated that maize farmers in the State, have recorded 100 percent yield per hectare in the past three years due to the widespread adoption of striga weed control techniques introduced in 2011.
Gital made this known recently in Bauchi adding that the techniques, namely crop rotation, mixed cropping and the application of viral powder, were adopted from the Kenya experience, and had proved to be very effective.
He explained that before the introduction of the techniques, 25 Agriculture Extension Agents were trained, after which each of them selected 20 farmers within his areas of jurisdictions for trial.

In his words, “20 farmlands were selected, who were made to establish demonstration farms and each farmer adopted one of the newly introduced techniques of striga control on their maize, sorghum and cow-pea farms. He reiterated that “Where farmers used to get 50 percent yield due to damage by striga, they got 100 percent yield, while where some earlier recorded zero yield, they first attained 50 percent and in subsequent years, recorded 100 percent”. According to Gital, the success of the techniques is being reviewed continuously and where problems are detected, experts are invited to improve on the research.

Generating a Genome to Feed the World: UA-Led Team Decodes African Rice

     An international team of researchers led by the University of Arizona has sequenced the complete genome of African rice.

The genetic information will enhance scientists' and agriculturalists' understanding of the growing patterns of African rice, as well as enable the development of new rice varieties that are better able to cope with increasing environmental stressors to help solve global hunger challenges.

The paper, "The genome sequence of African rice (Oryza glaberrima) and evidence for independent domestication," was published online in Nature Genetics on Sunday.

The effort to sequence the African rice genome was led by Rod A. Wing, director of the Arizona Genomics Institute at the UA and the Bud Antle Endowed Chair in the School of Plant Sciences in the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, with a joint appointment in the UA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

"Rice feeds half the world, making it the most important food crop," Wing said. "Rice will play a key role in helping to solve what we call the 9 billion-people question."

The 9 billion-people question refers to predictions that the world's population will increase to more than 9 billion people – many of whom will live in areas where access to food is extremely scarce – by the year 2050. The question lies in how to grow enough food to feed the world's population and prevent the host of health, economic and social problems associated with hunger and malnutrition.

Now, with the completely sequenced African rice genome, scientists and agriculturalists can search for ways to cross Asian and African species to develop new varieties of rice with the high-yield traits of Asian rice and the hardiness of African rice.

"African rice is once more at the forefront of cultivation strategies that aim to confront climate change and food availability challenges," said Judith Carney, a professor in the Department of Geography and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of "Black Rice." The book describes the historical importance of African rice, which was brought to the United States during the period of transatlantic slavery.

Carney is also a co-author on the Nature Genetics paper, and her book served as one of the inspirations behind sequencing the African rice genome.

"We're merging disciplines to solve the 9 billion-people question," Wing said.

Although it is currently cultivated in only a handful of locations around the world, African rice is hardier and more resistant to environmental stress in West African environments than Asian varieties, Wing said.

African rice already has been crossed with Asian rice to produce new varieties under a group known as NERICA, which stands for New Rice for Africa.

The African rice genome is especially important because many of the genes code for traits that make African rice resistant to environmental stress, such as long periods of drought, high salinity in the soils and flooding.

"Now that we have a precise knowledge of the genome we can identify these traits more easily and move genes more rapidly through conventional breeding methods, or through genetic modification techniques," noted Wing, who is also a member of the UA's BIO5 Institute and holds the Axa Endowed Chair of Genome Biology and Evolutionary Genomics at the International Rice Research Institute. "The idea is to create a super-rice that will be higher yielding but will have less of an environmental impact – such as varieties that require less water, fertilizer and pesticides."

Hardy, high-yield crops will become increasingly vital for human survival as the world faces the environmental effects of climate change and an ever-growing global population, he added.

Wing's research group specializes in developing what geneticists call physical maps, a tool that enables scientists to understand the structure of the genome. His group developed the physical maps for Asian rice and donated it to the Rice Genome Project, making sequencing of that complete genome possible.

Much of the evolutionary analysis of the genome was performed by Muhua Wang, a UA plant sciences doctoral candidate, and by Carlos Machado of the University of Maryland. Yeisoo Yu, a research associate professor in Wing's research group at the Arizona Genomics Institute, led the sequencing effort.

In analyzing the 33,000 genes that make up the African rice genome, the researchers discovered that during the process of domestication, Africans and Asians independently selected for many of the same genetic traits in the two species, such as higher nutrition and traits that make harvesting the crop easier.

Additionally, the sequenced genome helps resolve questions about whether African rice originally was domesticated in one region or in several locations across Africa. By comparing the genome with what is known about the genetic structure of wild varieties, Wing and his team found that it's most similar to a population of wild rice species found in one location along the Niger River in Mali. "Our data supports the hypothesis that the domestication of African rice was centric in this region of Africa," Wing said.

From 1998 to 2005, Wing led the U.S. effort to help sequence the genome of Asian rice, which is the only other domesticated rice species. Those results were published in the journal Nature in 2005, and have since enabled the discovery of hundreds of agriculturally important genes, including genes that code for faster breeding cycles and the ability for the plant to survive for up to two weeks underwater during periods of flooding.

Wing's research group is now focusing on sequencing and analyzing the genomes of the wild relatives of African and Asian rice. "By understanding the entire genus at a genome level we have a whole new pool of genetic variation that can be used to combat pests and plant pathogens," Wing explained.

One example, he said, would be adding disease resistance genes from all of the wild rice varieties to a species of cultivated rice, creating a new super-crop that is resistant to diseases and pests.

Wing is also working with Quifa Zhang from Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, China, to create a set of super-crop science and technology centers around the world, where focused and coordinated efforts could help solve the 9 billion-people question. "We really only have about 25 years to solve this problem, and if we're always competing with each other it's not going to work," he said.

"After decades of promoting high-yielding Asian varieties, the emphasis now is on developing types that combine the former's higher yields with glaberrima’s tolerance of environmental stress," Carney noted.

In November, Wing and his collaborators will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the completion of the Asian rice genome and the new completion of the African rice genome at the 12th International Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics, a conference that will be held in Tucson, Arizona

SEEDCAKE EXTRACT FROM GM FLAX HAS BROAD SPECTRUM ANTIBACTERIAL ACTIVITy

The antibiotic resistance of pathogenic microorganisms is a worldwide problem. To solve this, new antibiotics are needed. Magdalena Zuk and researchers from the Wroclaw University in Poland now study the potential of genetically modified flax in producing antibiotics.

Transgenic flax plants produce compounds with potential antimicrobial activity. An alkali hydrolyzed seedcake extract from flax seeds was used against several pathogenic bacteria. Results showed the antibacterial activity of the extract which may be due to bacterial topoisomerase II inhibition and genomic DNA disintegration.

The results strongly suggest that seedcake extract is a candidate for antimicrobial action against a broad spectrum of pathogens. It will be an excellent answer to drug resistance in pathogenic bacteria.

For more information regarding this study, please vist:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6750/14/70/abstract

Cross River is the world’s fourth biggest cocoa producer with annual volumes of around 60,000 tonnes

Cross River State will soon begin implementation of the removal of the N5,000 non-compliance levy imposed per tonne of cocoa. The agreement to remove the levy came shortly after the cocoa merchants in Ikom, Cross River State took to the streets protesting against government agencies’ alleged refusal to issue evacuation papers for onward shipment of Cocoa.
While making the announcement to suspend the tariff, Commissioner for Agriculture, James Aniyo said the non-compliance levy has been suspended till the outcome of the stakeholders meeting. “We have instructed the Director of Produce Inspection to commence the immediate grading of Cocoa and allow merchants to lift their produce,” he said.
Earlier, the Cocoa Association of Nigeria (CAN) had challenged the tariff imposition in court and eventually got a judgment stopping the government from collecting the levy.
“The non-compliance levy was illegal and the association expects government to respect court judgment. We have paid the money for three years now but now that the court has decided on the matter we want government to stop the illegal levy,” said State CAN Chairman, Mr. Alphonsus Nana. The Non-Compliance Levy dates back to 2011, under the then Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr. Sandy Onor. Tariffs were imposed on merchants who refused to ship from the state port. The diminishing viability of the ports was cited as reason for this imposition.
“The State Commissioner for Agriculture should call his people to order to stop harassing the cocoa merchants in their bid to collect the money,” Mr Nana said.
The State Chairman of CAN feared that further delay in shipping the produce could affect output this season, adding that it could also cause the State Cocoa sector to collapse. Cocoa shipments from Cross River had been halted in the past week owing to disagreements over suspension of the levy.