By Valentine Oforo, Arusha
WORLD Vegetable Center (Worldveg) is running a special project to disseminate key technologies to the vegetable farmers in the country, the program which eyes to reach out to nearly 2 million farmers next year.
As per the project's setup, the farmers will aquire the most necessary technologies throughout on- the - field training, as well as different audio-visual programs to be channeled through various social media outlets.
Christened 'Vegetech Hub' the robust initiative which receives its lucrative funds from International Fertilizer Development Centre (IFDC) bases on rolling out of a total of five key technologies to the targeted farmers.
Giving an exclusive interview to this platform during a special tour of the facility, Nickson Mlowe, an Agronomist at the Arusha-based Worldveg, unveiled the technologies as soil health, water use efficiency, fertilizer use efficiency, seed trials, post harvest loss reduction as well as other emerging value chains.
"We have been partnering with numerous stakeholders from the private sector to impart the farmers with the said technologies, " Mlowe expressed.
The stakeholders, according to him, include East West Seed, Agrimatco and International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
"Next year's, we're mulling to attract more stakeholder companies, including those from the public sector so as to ensure the farmers are getting further and larger opportunities to learn over wider varieties of key technologies to help them heighten their productivity, " he added.
And in training the beneficiary farmers over , water use efficiency, the project is assisting the farmers to adopt use Chameleon Soil Water Sensor.
"The Chameleon Soil Water Sensor mimics the way a plant experiences the amount of water in the soil by measuring how hard the roots have to suck (the tension required) to extract moisture,"
"It is designed to be accurate in the range that most plants are sensitive to water stress. Because the Chameleon Sensor measures tension, it does not need to be calibrated to different soil types," Mlowe detailed.
And in measuring the extent of water (moisture) in soil, he said the friendly technology is using special card which detects the amount of water through three different colours, red and green and blue.
"During soil measuring, when blue color appears means the soil is wet (0 to 20 kPa), if green colour the soil is moist (20 to 50 kPa) and if the card turn to red color means the soil is dry (greater than 50 kPa)," he explained.
With the technology, he said farmers stands professional side to know when exactly to irrigate the farm, and not necessary daily.
"This technology guide the farmers on when exactly to irrigate the vegetable farm, sometimes it maybe one or two times per week and not necessarily daily as most of the farmers are striving to do," Mlowe insisted.
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