The University of Agriculture, Markurdi has signed a license agreement with Value Seed Company (VSC) to commercialize its newly released cowpea variety, FUAMPEA 3, so as to improve farmers’ yield and boost food security.
The partnership was facilitated by Syngenta Foundation-Nigeria (SFN) in collaboration with New Market Lab (NLM), to promote the newly developed bean variety as one of the 2022 approved and released varieties by the National Variety Release Committee (NVRC).
The partnership was facilitated by Syngenta Foundation-Nigeria (SFN) in collaboration with New Market Lab (NLM), to promote the newly developed bean variety as one of the new varieties approved and released in 2022 by the National Variety Release Committee (NVRC).
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The country’s program manager of the Syngenta Foundation, Gabriel Isaiah, during the signing of the agreement in Abuja, disclosed that the foundation is gradually changing the narrative through the partnership to ensure that any variety developed by scientists gets to the hands of smallholder farmers.
Isaiah hinted that SFN owns it as a duty to facilitate, stimulate the market, develop a business plan, and provide technical assistance for seed companies to pick orphan crops like cowpea and sorghum for quality productivity, adding that they are working with New Market Lab to ensure the improved variety is given a legal tooth which would fit into the ECOWAS catalogue.
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Dr Iolarmen Teryima, a representative from the University boasted that the qualities of improved cowpea FUAMPEA 3 had made the seed to become farmers’ delight, due to its brown color, large seed size with a potential yield of 2.5 per hectare, and its resistant to Striga gesnerioides, alectra and tolerant to bacteria blight, cercospira leaf spot among other.
