Plant clinics help tackle crop diseases

It is a Monday evening and Dominique Nkundukozera, a farmer in Rusatira Sector in Huye District, is seated on a chair at Kinkanga market, with several cassava stems. He had brought the stems for examination by experts at a ‘Plant Health Clinic’ at the market. Nkundukozera was with other farmers from the sector who had also come with samples of their plants for testing and possible advice on disease control. He said the Plant Health Clinic has proven important to him in terms of mitigating losses made on his farm ascribed to diseases in plants. Introduced in 2011, the initiative, which is under the Rwanda Agricultural Board (RAB), is implemented by Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI), a UK based organisation. “Before the Plant Clinic initiative, I was losing about 60 per cent of my produce each season. It was unbearable because I could not even recoup the investment on the farm; however, since I started getting advice on disease management, losses have declined to 20 per cent,” he said. Nkundukozera added that he is optimistic that he will count no losses in the future as he continues to gain expertise in plant disease control and management. Marie Goreth Uwizeye, another farmer from the same sector praised the initiative and thanked government for backing the new disease control mechanism. She had various samples of the crops she grows including fruits such as plum. “I grow fruits and other crops like bananas. When we come to the Plant Clinic we have our crop samples tested and we get advice on how to treat the diseases that may threaten our crops,” she said. Plant Health Clinic is an outreach programme that was introduced to enable farmers identify diseases that threaten their crops and get professional advice from ‘plant doctors’. Farmers said, before the plant clinics, they had no precise information about the different diseases affecting their crops, which would result in applying the wrong pesticides, hence incurring losses. The plant clinics are often brought to busy places like markets as a way of ensuring they get to as many farmers as possible. While touring Huye District on Monday to assess the performance of the Plant Health Clinic initiative, Trevor Nicholls, the CEO, CABI said, the project was intended to help farmers improve their incomes and their livelihoods and provide long-term solutions for agriculture related issues. “Farmers have been losing a lot of what they grow to pests and diseases…the loss was between 30 and 70 per cent. So, we found it very important to help farmers reduce these losses because if they lose less, they can feed their families better and if they sell their produce, they can get more income,” he said. Nicholls added that, at the global level, they see new crop diseases arising as a result of climate change, which calls for preventive measures. “If we are going to feed 10 billion people on the planet by 2050, we’ve got to produce twice as much food as we do today. So, an important step in feeding many people is to make sure we minimise losses,” he said. The Director General of RAB, Dr Louis Butare, said they are happy that farmers have embraced the initiative. “It is a good initiative because it is putting farmers at the forefront of seeking solutions to the problems facing agriculture,” he said, adding that this is much better than having to wait for the agronomists get to their farms, which may be too late. He said the effects of climate change accelerate the intensity of crop diseases during dry season and fungus during rainy season. So far, 65 plant health clinics have been set up across the country, of which 15 are in the Southern Province, but RAB officials say these are still few. Some farmers still have to move a distance of about 20 kilometres to get these services. CABI operates in 48 countries worldwide and has so far injected $60 million in the plant clinic project. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Plant clinics help tackle crop diseases