Posted on March, 28, 2023 at 07:25 am
Arusha. A new genetic reference library under construction is set to lock out of the market fake or substandard seeds.
The facility will serve as an information centre for all genetic materials in the seeds industry.
“This is among measures to ensure only quality seeds are in the market,” said Tanzania Official Seed Certification Institute (Tosci) director general Patrick Ngwediagi.
Construction of the facility is underway, he revealed during a meeting of seed industry stakeholders in Arusha.
He said the government agency was determined to have all seeds planted certified so as to improve crop productivity.
“The certification begins with the seeds proper to the cuttings for plants grown or planted through cuttings,” Mr Ngwediagi said.
He regretted that there was little awareness among the farmers and other players in the seed value chain on quality seeds.
“The drawbacks extend to the experts besides the farmers. It is a big problem,” he told the meeting at an Arusha hotel.
The challenge, Mr Ngwediagi went on, can be addressed through training of the farmers and seed traders.
He acknowledged that some seed traders or distributors were still either selling fake seeds or using fake labels for the same.
However, he noted, the anomaly was being addressed through the introduction of electronic labels “that will toss out fake seeds”.
Electronic labels (e-labels), he explained, were a result of electronic certification (e-certification) of seeds already in place.
Mr Ngwediagi added that Tosci already has a state-of-art laboratory in Morogoro tasked for accreditation of seeds.
Tosci, an agency under the ministry of Agriculture, was established in 2003 by the Seed Act No. 18.
It is responsible for the certification and promotion of quality agricultural seeds produced or imported into the country for sale.
According to Mr Ngwediagi, Tanzania was ahead of many countries in seed certification given the number of species.
The country is a member of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (Ipov), an intergovernmental body based in Geneva.
The organisation aims to promote an effective system of plant variety protection as well as encouraging the development of new varieties of plants.
In meeting some of the benchmarks in the seed sector, in 2012 Tanzania enacted its new Plant Breeders’ Rights Act in line with the UPOV Convention of 1991.
According to the Tanzania Seed Traders Association (Tasta), the availability of the quality seeds in the local markets has lately improved.
They increased from 10,946 tonnes in 2014/15 to 77,252 tonnes in 2019/20, an increase of 87 percent.
The rise has been attributed to an 80 percent increased production of the seeds locally from 4,337 tonnes in 2015/15 to 61,893 tonnes in 2019/20.
Speaking at the meeting, the Netherlands’ ambassador to Tanzania, Mr Wiebe de Boer, said Tanzania remains potential for investments from his country.
He said there were already over 50 Dutch companies operating in Arusha and Kilimanjaro regions “mainly in agriculture and agriculture-related undertakings.”
Mr de Boer added that both favourable climatic conditions and political stability were likely to enable Tanzania to attract “highly specialized investors”.
He added that Tanzania was one of the show cases in Africa for the European Union (EU) market “for its high quality horticultural exports”.
Source: The Citizen