Technologies Ready to Scale
Technology development and deployment is facilitated in close partnership with end users and stakeholders in the food system to meet identified demands and foster a continual feedback and improvement process.
Ready-to-scale technologies moved through a phased process from ideation, field testing, piloting, documentation, and official release in-country. These technologies are scaled through multiple private and public networks.
Agricultural and Food Technologies
PEARL MILLET AND SORGHUM SEEDBALLS WITH 30% YIELD GAIN
INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT: PARASITOID WASPS ATTACK MILLET HEAD MINER TO HELP PRODUCE 34% YIELD GAIN
EASY PREPARATION SORGHUM AND MILLET FOOD PRODUCTS
INCREASED INCOME THROUGH SORGHUM-BASED INJERA AND HEALTHY SNACKS
WHITE SORGHUM HYBRID WITH 15% YIELD GAIN
SUGARCANE APHID-RESISTANT SORGHUM GERMPLASM FOR GLOBAL SEED COMPANY APPLICATION
MERERA - IMPROVED SORGHUM VARIETY WITH UP TO 43% YIELD GAIN
CROP: SorghumTARGET COUNTRY: Ethiopia
Dr. Getachew Ayana
Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR)Melkassa Agricultural Research Center (MARC)
Adama, Ethiopia
Email: getachew_ayana@yahoo.com
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:
Dr. Tesfaye Mengiste
Purdue UniversityEmail: tmengist@purdue.edu
For Merera sorghum seed availability, please contact:
Bako Agricultural Research CenterChemeda Birhanu
Phone: +251 91393645 or +251 917736746
Email: chemedabirhanu@gmail.com
Oromia Agricultural Research Institute
Teshome Bogale
Phone: +251 911388166
Email: teshe_2008@yahoo.com
“Merera” is an improved disease-resistant sorghum variety with up to 43% yield gain for higher rainfall zones in western Ethiopia. Our global team successfully identified two key genes that carry anthracnose resistance in sorghum, enabling targeted breeding of disease resistance into locally adapted farmer-preferred sorghums for use by smallholder farmers and scaling in the region.
PEARL MILLET AND SORGHUM SEEDBALLS WITH 30% AVERAGE YIELD GAIN
CROP: Pearl Millet and Sorghum
TARGET COUNTRIES: West Africa
IN-COUNTRY CONTACTS and CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS:
Dr. Hannatou Moussa Oumarou
INRAN
Maradi, Niger
Email: hannaemoussa@yahoo.com
Dr. Ali Aminou
FUMA Gaskiya Farmer Association
Maradi, Niger
Email: fumagaskiya@gmail.com
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:
Dr. Ludger Herrmann
University of Hohenheim
Email: ludger.herrmann@uni-hohenheim.de
CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:
Dr. Charles Nwankwo
University of Hohenheim
Email: charsile2000@yahoo.com
For more information:
Seedballs are produced at home with local materials that provide a 30% average yield gain while also empowering women to dry seed their fields before the intense planting season around rainfall events. Seedballs are a sowing technique for semi-arid areas, especially aimed at the improvement of plant establishment with dry sowing. Seedballs represent a mixture of soil material, seeds and additives (e.g., nutrients, pesticides). They aim at small-grain cereal cropping systems with wide spacing (seed pockets).
INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT: PARASITOID WASPS ATTACK MILLET HEAD MINER TO HELP PRODUCE 34% YIELD GAIN
CROP: Pearl MilletTARGET COUNTRIES: West Africa
IN-COUNTRY CONTACT and PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:
Dr. Malick Ba
International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)Niamey, Niger
Office: +227 20722725
Mobile: +227 20722626
Email: b.malick@cigar.org
Parasitoid wasps are naturally occurring predatory (non-stinging) wasps that can be reared at the household level and strategically deployed against the millet head miner pest to protect fields of millet, allowing for up to a 34% yield gain. Parasitoid wasps (Habrobracon hebetor) are reared in small jute bags with a mixture of millet and cowpea, allowing offspring to emerge from these rearing bags and disperse to millet fields to control millet head miner insects. A set of 15 bags yield an inoculate population of circa 1,000 parasitoids and successive generations will disperse. This provides coverage of up to 3 square kilometers and provides up to 34% yield gain, compared to unprotected fields of pearl millet.
EASY TO PREPARE SORGHUM AND MILLET FOOD PRODUCTS
CROP: Sorghum & Pearl MilletTARGET COUNTRIES: West Africa
IN-COUNTRY CONTACTS:
Dr. Cheikh Ndiaye
ITADakar, Senegal
Email: chndiaye@ita.sn
Dr. Moustapha Moussa
INRANNiamey, Niger
Email: moustimou@yahoo.fr
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:
Dr. Bruce Hamaker
Purdue UniversityEmail: hamakerb@purdue.edu
Food product recipes, processing techniques, and training to allow women entrepreneurs to produce and market easy-to-prepare traditional food products for the modern food table. Building greater demand for locally produced grains to provide more reliable income for West African smallholder farmers and creation of entrepreneurial opportunities and networks for women and youth.
INCREASED INCOME THROUGH SORGHUM-BASED INJERA AND HEALTHY SNACKS
CROP: SorghumTARGET COUNTRY: Ethiopia
Dr. Kebede Abegaz
Hawassa UniversityHawassa, Ethiopia
Email: abegaz2005@yahoo.co.uk
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:
Dr. Joseph Awika
Texas A&M UniversityEmail: awika@tamu.edu
Unique highly digestible (IHD) sorghum lines that have improved performance in food processing and allow for sorghum-based injera production are being introduced. Reduced input cost using IHD sorghum and teff flour mixes for injera production compared with 100% teff injera will give female injera producers added income. Other recipes and milling techniques to support sorghum-based food products from locally available sorghum are being developed.
WHITE SORGHUM HYBRID WITH 15% YIELD GAIN
CROP: SorghumTARGET COUNTRY: Ethiopia
IN-COUNTRY CONTACT:
Dr. Alemu Tirfessa
Coordinator for the Sorghum Improvement Program at Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) & Melkassa Agricultural Research Center (MARC)P.O. Box 436
Adama, Ethiopia
Office: +251 22 225 0227
Mobile: +251 91 188 75 17
Fax: +251 22 225 0213
aatirfessa@gmail.com
tirfessa@hotmail.com
Mark Stelter
Texas A&M AgriLife Research and ExtensionLubbock, Texas
mstelter@ag.tamu.edu
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:
Dr. Bonnie Pendleton
West Texas A&M Universitybpendleton@wtamu.edu
Official registration of RTx3410 through RTx3428 sorghum germplasm in the United States that can provide seed companies parent lines to develop sugarcane aphid-resistant seed for marketing. A dynamic team over time successfully identified key sugarcane aphid-resistant materials and germplasm through global collaborations.
