By Valentine Oforo
WORLD Vegetable Center (Worldveg), the Arusha-based international non-profit research and development institute with a unique mandate in vegetables, has researched and introduced to the horticulture growers in the country a soil less farming technology.
Being impressive works of the vegetable mogul at the center’s special ‘Vegetech Hub', the introduced helpful farming methods is for assisting the farmers in the key agro sub-sector to cheat diverse crop diseases, as well as negative impacts of climate change.
Soil less farming is a farming practice through which plants can be grown without the use and presence of soil as a rooting medium, in which the nutrients absorbed by the roots are supplied through the irrigation water.
Detailing over the vital development for the betterment of the country’s horticulture sector, Nickson Mlowe, an Agronomist at the Worldveg expressed that they have decided to hatch the environmental- friendly technology after realizing that majority of farmers in the sector were incurring huge loss due to crop yield failure, propelled by diseases.
“Research proves that most plant (crop) diseases originating from soil and the majority of vegetable farmers in the country are not standing on a better financial and technical side to tackle the naught diseases,” he expressed.
And Mlowe communicated that the so far introduced soil-less farming practices are useful and are not very expensive for the farmers to adopt in their greenhouse plantations. He named the soil less farming methods as use of coco peat, peat moss and hydroponics instead of using soil.
“These methods are very meaningful and helpful to assist the vegetable farmers to battle against several disease challenges in their fields, but also they're playing a vital role to assist the farmers to withstand severe effects of climate change,” he insisted.
He observed that the facility would continue conducting more research to assure the farmers engaging into the vital economic sector in the country are benefiting accordingly from their farming investments and efforts.
Executing its top role through auspicious funds from International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), the ‘Vegetech Hub', mapped in Tengeru, a small market-town located below Mount Meru, is designated for the research and rolling out of helpful technologies for heightening performance of the horticulture sector in the country, as well as Africa in large.
The center is expecting to serve more than 2 million farmers next year to acquire and put into practice different key technologies, including those based on soil health, water use efficiency, fertilizer use efficiency, seed trials, post harvest loss reduction, together with the other emerging value chains.
As part of the robust development, the center has successfully managed to introduce the vegetable farmers with the chameleon soil water sensor technology.
Dispensing under the key theme of ‘Sowing Seeds, Meeting Seeds’ Worldveg which recently celebrated 50 years anniversary of it excelling performance launched its mission in 1992 in Arusha, Northern Tanzania and today the center has professional research and development staff working across Africa on important vegetable crops such as tomato, pepper, onion and cabbage, as well as a range of African traditional vegetables, and partners with more than 40 national institutions and many international organizations.
The Center operates three regional bases in Africa: in Tanzania for Eastern and Southern Africa, in Mali for West and Central Africa – Dry Regions (established 2014), and in Benin for West and Central Africa – Coastal and Humid Regions (2017). There is a liaison office in Cameroon to reach into sub-Saharan Africa with improved vegetable varieties and production technologies.
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