BIO-EARN Project 2

Project 2: Towards sustainable cassava and sweetpotato production

This project aims at generating technologies and capacity that will facilitate cassava and sweet potato genetic improvement and clean seed production. Cassava and sweetpotato play significant roles in the farming and food systems in eastern Africa and this project will contribute to food security and economic development in the region.

Implementing Institutions

Implementation Status

The project has generated a lot of information on the virus and virus resistance in sweet potato and cassava, root quality traits in cassava, yield parameters of sweet potato, vector and vector-disease relationships of SPVD and CBSD, disease diagnostics and cheaper micropagation techniques.

Some of the partner countries have started harnessing the results of the project. For instance, the NaCRRI in Uganda has incorporated identified superior genotypes with respect to starch quality in the cassava variety improvement programme. The project has also compiled information on CBSD incidence, severity and distribution in EA.

This information has been used by NARS in Uganda in deployment of varieties, understanding disease epidemiology and screening for resistance. Full utilisation of these results/outputs from the project needs further confirmatory trials and development of a seed delivery system before they are handed over to the national programmes and or the private sector.

This project involves 23 scientists from 10 institutions namely; Makerere University, Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute, Addis Ababa University, National Agricultural Crops Resources Research Institute, Namulonge, Med Biotech Laboratories, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala and University of Helsinki. The project is training 1 postdoctoral student, 2 PhDs and 10 MSC students..