The National Agricultural Seed Council, an agency of the Federal Government, started training farmers and other stakeholders in quality control and crop certification on Thursday.
The National Agricultural Seed Council’s acting director general, Dr. Khalid Ishiaku, said the Federal Government was determined to protect the farmers and rid the nation of all adulterated agricultural seeds during his speech at the training, which took place in Jos, Plateau State.
He claims that the training programme being conducted all throughout the nation as part of the Programme for Seed System Innovation for Vegetatively-Propagated Crops in Africa seeks to increase food security in Nigeria by increasing the effectiveness of the targeted crops’ seed systems.
Ishiaku said, “We have a challenge in Nigeria that we really need to solve, which has to do with getting vegetatively propagated crops into the formal certification system.
“So, there is a need to develop these crops like cassava, potatoes, banana, plantain, which we use their vegetative parts for the next generation and create the process of decentralising the quality assurance for minimum standard. And that is why we are conducting this training for field inspectors or third-party certification officers to help in the certification process and bring it closer to the farmers.”
