Senegalese Agri-Tech Facilitates Farm Investment

Senegalese startup Bayseddo, which allows users to crowd invest in agriculture, has facilitated US$400,000 in investments in the last 18 months.

Formed after founder Mamadou Sall visited France and saw that all land was put to good use producing crops for local consumption, something which was not happening back home in Senegal, Bayseddo links farmer associations with land but no funds with potential investors.

“Our platform is predicated upon the fact that a large number of people want to invest in agriculture in Africa, but lack a proper introduction to the environment. We make it convenient for them. There is also approximately 1.2 million hectares of unexploited arable land in Senegal alone, and that is an enormous opportunity.”

“Our business model creates a win-win-win scenario, allowing farmers to increase their standard of living in rural areas, investors to get a return on investment of between 12 and 25 per cent in six months, and us to contribute to the eradication of the food self-sufficiency myth in all of Africa. We are in every step of the value chain, from input level to harvest and sale,” Sall told Disrupt Africa.

Bayseddo stands alone in Senegal, but startups with similar models have succeeded elsewhere, most notably Farmcrowdy and Thrive Agric in Nigeria. This first-to-market status has helped the startup secure real traction, and more than US$400,000 has been invested through its platform so far.

“We work with 135 farmers, and have more than 150 investors,” said Sall. “Successfully operating projects to terms, and giving investors their promised return on investments have been the engine of our growth, because happy investors tend to share their happy experiences with fellow investors. The same goes for producers. Reluctant ones at first became believers in our system because we do not compromise on either the quality of our products or the commitment needed.”

The startup, which takes 25 per cent of the margin from any project run through its platform, raised US$100,000 in funding late last year from the Délégation de l’Entrepreneuriat Rapide (DER), a financing vehicle launched by the Senegalese government to boost the local tech scene, and has already begun expanding.

“We’re also operating in Mali in partnership with Orange Mali. The next step is the entire West African region,” Sall said.

Disrupt Africa

Kenya: Biofuel From Cotton Waste

Kenyan farmer Abel Mutie Mathoka thought it must be a joke when he was told he could irrigate his drought-hit crops more cheaply, cleanly and efficiently using a pump fuelled by cotton waste.

"Who could believe it's possible to make a fuel better than diesel from cotton seeds? I didn't!" laughed Mathoka, crouching down to inspect the watermelons on his 10-acre (four-hectare) shared plot in Ituri village in Kenya's southeast Kitui county.

"But it works," he said, walking over to a nearby tree and plucking a large green pawpaw. "Irrigation with this biodiesel water pump has helped me get higher yields, especially during drought periods."

Mathoka said his earnings had doubled in the two years he has been pumping water using biodiesel, which is both more efficient and 20 shillings ($0.20) per litre cheaper than regular diesel.

Unlike most biofuels, which are derived from crops such as maize, sugarcane, soybean, rapeseed and jatropha, it is made from a byproduct of the cotton-making process. That means that as well as being cleaner and cheaper than regular fuel, it is more sustainable than other biofuels because no extra land is needed to produce it.

From Brazil to Indonesia, the rush to cultivate biofuel crops has driven forest communities off their land and pushed farmers to switch from crops-for-food to more profitable crops-for-fuel - exacerbating food shortages.

"Our biodiesel comes from crushing cotton seeds left over as waste after ginning - the process of separating the seeds from raw cotton," said Taher Zavery, managing director of Zaynagro Industries Ltd, the Kitui-based company producing the biodiesel.

"We started producing and using it to power our cotton ginning factory in 2011. With increased production, we now use it for our trucks, sell it to the United Nations to run some of their buses - and also to local farmers for irrigation."

More than 1,200 farmers in Kitui have so far invested in biodiesel pumps for irrigation as part of an initiative launched by Zaynagro in 2015, said Zavery.

A small but growing number are shedding their burden of reliance on the weather - and investing in irrigation systems powered by Zaynagro's cotton seed biodiesel through a pay-as-you-go scheme launched more than three years ago.

Neighbouring farmers band together to invest in the irrigation system - which includes the biodiesel pump, 12 metres of pipes and 10 litres of biodiesel - at costs starting from 32,000 shillings (1US$=KES103; July 2019), depending on the size of the pump.

The farmers make an initial payment, then pay interest-free monthly instalments until the total is paid off. They buy the biodiesel to run the pumps from Zaynagro at Ksh80 ($0.8) a litre.

Full article...

Kenya: Human Waste Used To Grow High-Protein Livestock Feed

by Hereward Holland

,Kenyan farmer Victor Kyalo's chickens have doubled the number of eggs they are laying. The reason: Human excrement.

He is feeding them food from a Nairobi-based organics recycling company. Sanergy harvests waste from toilets it operates in a franchise network in Nairobi's sprawling slums and feeds it to fly larvae, which become high-quality animal feed.

Kyalo says his customers have noticed the difference in the past three weeks: yellower yolks and larger eggs. "Before we were getting like five trays (of eggs) per day, but now we are getting 10," Kyalo said. "It’s kind of perfect for me."

...businesses harvesting insects -- either for human consumption or as animal feed -- are growing. They promote themselves as a greener alternative to traditional feed such as soybeans, whose cultivation can lead to deforestation and the overuse of farm chemicals.

Fast food giant McDonald’s and U.S. agricultural powerhouse Cargill Inc are among many large companies studying using insects for chicken feed to reduce reliance on soy protein in the $400 billion-a-year animal feed business.

By 2023 the global edible insect market could triple to $1.2 billion from current levels, market research firm Meticulous Research said last year.

In developing countries like Kenya, where the World Bank says nearly two-thirds of urbanites live in slums, feeding waste to fly larvae could solve both sanitation and nutrition problems.


Faeces from more than two-thirds of Nairobi's inhabitants go untreated because there are not enough toilets. Many others are not cleaned out regularly, Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company said.
During the rains, they often overflow, polluting local waterways. That can make workers ill. Days off slow Kenya's economy by around 1% annually, its Health Ministry said.

David Auerbach co-founded Sanergy eight years ago to deal with sanitation. The waste management franchise provides more than 2,500 toilets to 100,000 people daily.

Beds of writhing black soldier fly larvae feast on a mix of excrement and food waste from hotels and agri-businesses. That produces two products for farmers: fertiliser and animal feed.

In 10 days the larvae munch their way through 70% of the waste, leaving behind a manure laden with nitrogen and calcium, which becomes organic fertiliser.

Once the recycling plant is expanded later this year, Auerbach said it will provide 400 tonnes of fertiliser. Larvae production will ratchet up from 7 tonnes to 300 tonnes per month.

The plump white larvae are boiled in hot water to kill off pathogens, Michael Lwoyelo, managing director of Sanergy, said. The larvae are then sold to animal feed millers, who grind them into powder mixed with other ingredients to create a balanced diet for poultry, pigs and fish.

Frederick Wangombe, an animal nutritionist at Unifeed, a Kenyan animal feed miller that uses Sanergy's black soldier fly product, envisages it replacing fish meal from Lake Victoria, which can contain sand and other impurities, or expensive soy beans from Zambia.

"The egg farmer doesn't want to know what's in the feed, they want to know the performance," he said. (US$1 = 101.1000 Kenyan shillings)

Full article...

Fecal Pellets As Fertilizer

“Decomposed excreta improves the soil structure, increases its water-holding capacity, reduces pests and diseases and neutralises soil toxins and heavy metals,” states the study done by Josiane Nikiema from the International Water Management Institute, Ghana.

However, there is a social barrier to using decomposed faecal matter.

In 2009, in Durban, South Africa, the eThekwini municipality developed the ‘LaDePa’ or Latrine Dehydration Pasteurisation machine to treat faecal sludge from the ‘Ventilated Improved Pit’ latrines. Here the sludge is extruded for the formation of pellets, which are then exposed to infrared radiation.

The final product is dried and pasteurised pellets that are safe to handle, with minimum exposure to pathogen risk. These are planned to be sold as an agricultural product.

According to a study, published in 2018 in South African Journal of Chemical Engineering, dried pellets can be reused in agriculture as organic fertiliser. The fertiliser has a high phosphorous content, which is essential for plant growth. The study notes that the pellets are also rich in carbon, which helps enrich the soil with organic matter.

Pelletisation of fertilisers also makes the process of application in the field very easy as the pellets are dust-free. The pellets release more nutrients to the soil in comparison to the traditional powdered fertilisers.

What’s stopping these pellets from becoming popular? It could be a problem of mentality...but the pellets have been “whitened” with additional colours to promote social acceptance.

Full article...

Namibia: Hydroponic Grain Sprouts To Counter Drought-Caused Forage Shortage

As farmers clutch at straws to save their livestock in the face of a crippling drought gripping the country, a Namibian company has thrown them a lifeline.

Agritech Namibia is training farmers in hydroponics to produce fodder to be harvested in eight days. This is growing plants in water without any soil.

“We have been training farmers in hydroponics fodder production and we believe this can help them save their livestock at a fraction of the costs of conventional feeds,” said one of the instructors, Lawson Manyika.

So severe is the drought that president Hage Geingob declared it a state of emergency and the government set aside N$570 million (1 US$ = 14.86N$: June 2019 for mitigation programmes.

Manyika said in the face of the drought and high costs of feed, hydroponics fodder gives farmers an affordable and sustainable source of fresh fodder to see the livestock through their drought.

“With hydroponics we grow fodder from maize or barley and harvest in eight days.In fact, from day four it can be fed to poultry, from day six to rabbits and on day seven or eight to cattle, goats and sheep,” he said and advised farmers they can use untreated maize from granaries, as long as it can germinate. He said 40 kilogrammes of seed can give a farmer 400-500 kilos of fodder in seven to eight days.

Explaining the process, Manyika said seed is soaked in water for four hours to absorb enough moisture for germination. It is then put in a germination chamber for 24 hours until sprouts appear, then it is moved to growing trays.

“The seed has enough nutrients and energy for germination and when shoots appear it is able to survive to a certain stage.

“By the third day the plants will be five to 10 centimetres and from day four to six they will reach 20-25 cm. At this stage the seed will still have some nutrients stored so the fodder can be fed to poultry, rabbits and pigs.

“By day seven and eight the plants will be 25 to 30 cm and the seed will be depleted of nutrients. This is the time to harvest for cattle before the farmer incurs extra costs on fertiliser,” Manyika said.

Full arrticle...

Energy Efficient Tobacco Curing Barn Introduced In Zimbabwe

...uses coal, leading to hopes that tobacco farmers will rely less on the use of firewood for tobacco curing, which has caused a massive increase in deforestation in recent years.

Whether small scale tobacco farmers will find purchased coal cheaper than 'free' firewood remains to be seen.


Article...

Farming by cellphone remote control: Fascinating, but is it realistic?

The widespread and fairly sudden reach of mobile communications to even the remotest areas of most parts of Africa have revolutionised life in many ways, opening up many new possibilities that would have been unthinkable as recently as 20 years ago.

As the ability of cellphones to bridge distance and communication gaps have come to be taken for granted, more attention is being to using the technology in more targeted, practical ways. Just one successful example is how cellphone telephony has exposed tens of millions of  people to money transfer and banking services that were previously largely out of their convenient reach.

Another purpose of cellphone to which there has been much attention paid in recent years has been in delivering useful market and technical information to farmers in scattered, often remote areas. It is fairly early days in these efforts, part there are some reports of success in delivering information to farmers by cellphone on matters like market trends and prices, weather or other information. Many of these efforts have been based on inexpensive short message services (SMS) or some kind of simple subscription model.

Now come reports of more ambitious efforts, such as "telephone farmers,"...making use of a growing number of technologies and platforms to help them choose and manage their crops more efficiently" from a distance through availing on-farm information by smartphone.

Apparently, 'cloud farming' is a new phenomenon in which mobile devices are giving a growing number of Kenyan farmers the ability to do 'keep an eye on their out-of-town farms while working in the city.'

An interesting report says 'IBM's EZ-Farm project - currently being trialled in Kenya - is exploring how sophisticated data analytics can help farmers keep in touch with what is really happening on their out-of-town smallholdings. Sensors strategically placed around the farm monitor water tank levels, the amount of moisture in the soil, as well as the performance of irrigation equipment.'

No doubt there will be interesting and  perhaps even some practically useful lessons from these fascinating experiments delving into how to make widely available cellphones more useful. However, one skeptics experience tells him that for success in particularly small to medium scale farming, there are few or no substitutes for a physical experience!

The nature of small to medium scale farming is such that if you need a cellphone app to 'indicate whether crops are being watered too much or too little,' then your farming operation is likely in trouble on many other counts not related to how much water is or isn't in the soil. Small scale farming, especially if it is to be commercially viable, is generally a very hands-on enterprise by its very nature.

But hey, at the very least this new technology will give urban cell phone farmers with weekend plots in the rural areas some new app on  their smartphones to show off and boast about to their drinking buddies in the capital city.

Different context from Kenya perhaps, but in Zimbabwe the expression 'cellphone farmer' is not used admiringly to refer to a town-based farmer who has the details of the goings-on of his distant 'farm or plot at his finger-tips (or rather, on on his/her cellphone's screen), but is rather used derisively to distant, clueless and uninvolved salaried urbanites who think that claiming to be also a farmer (in their spare) time is cute and 'prestigious.' At best they will drive out to their farms on weekends or month ends to barbeque some meat and enjoy cold beers before driving back to the capital on Sunday afternoon, refreshed for the new week from their strenuous 'farming activities.'

While dumb phones are now available in virtually every outpost, the availability of smart phones, while now growing exponentially, is still much more limited. Part of this may may be data networks that are still far behind voice and SMS networks, but part of it is also that smartphones still cost considerably more than dumb phones.

But seriously though, there will likely eventually be some actually practically useful, real-world innovations from these experiments. As the scientist in charge says, "we're planning for the future."

African Agriculture

Do farming tips to farmers by cellphone make a big difference?

In the last few years there have been efforts all over Africa to link the explosive growth in cell phone availability with providing various services to farmers.

The latest such effort is one in which a development organization and one of Kenya's mobile phone carriers are said to have linked up to avail up to 250,000 farmers with information by cellphone SMS, short message service.

The farmers are to benefit from 'pertinent agriculture-related information, advice and research that will help them make better decisions about their crops, increasing the productivity of their yield, as well as their potential income.'

It sounds good, and airtime spent on SMS is a huge cash cow for mobile phone operators in Africa. At a few cents a message, it is accessible to even low income people and yet very profitable for the cell phone companies.

Just how useful are these services to farmers? The article in question here has few specifics. But when these initiatives they first began, one example that was given was how remote rural farmers could now know the price in distant towns of their crops, instead of having no choice but to accept the prices offered by traveling middlemen. However, using this example, just how much extra bargaining power does this give the farmer?

In this example, the farmer's problem may not be so much ignorance of the going prices of his/her crop in the big population centers where the markets are. A bigger problem may be lack of the ability to ferry his or her crop to those centers. The choice then is a stark one, particularly for perishable commodities-accept the price being offered by the traveling trader, or watch the crop rot. Knowing that the price hundreds of kilometers away is 50% higher than that being offered by the trader who is in the village with cash is neither much comfort nor much help.

Other information that has been touted in similar initiatives includes weather forecasts, technical information (e.g. how to deal with particular pests.)

There is certainly the potential for these services to be useful, but do they work as well as hyped? They are usually begun with much fanfare  and publicity, but there seems little follow to show the results after some months or years.

This particular Kenyan project is backed by USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 

African Agriculture    

12 ways mobile technology can boost African agriculture

 by Femi Adewunmi

In a recent report, titled Connected Agriculture, Vodafone and Accenture identified 12 opportunities for mobile phone technology to increase agricultural income and productivity. Some of these platforms
are already widely used in Africa, while others are still in the early stages of implementation.

1. Mobile payment systems

Mobile payment systems give farmers without access to financial services an inexpensive and secure way to transfer and save money using their mobile phones. By allowing smallholder farmers to save small amounts of money, receive payments quickly in times of need and pay for agricultural inputs via their phones, mobile payment systems replace costly traditional transfer services and the need to travel long distances to collect funds.

2. Micro-insurance systems

Mobile micro-insurance systems can safeguard farmers against losses when bad weather harms their harvest, encouraging them to buy better quality seeds and invest in fertiliser and other inputs. This can improve productivity and boost farmers' livelihoods as well as enabling suppliers to expand their market among smallholder farmers.

3. Micro-lending platforms

Micro-lending platforms could connect smallholders in Africa with individuals elsewhere willing to provide finance to help the farmers to buy much-needed agricultural inputs.


4. Mobile information platforms

Through mobile information platforms, farmers receive text messages with information that help to improve the productivity of their land and boost their incomes. Governments and agricultural support organizations can use the platforms to distribute information about available subsidies and programmes.

5. Farmer helplines

Farmers call a helpline and speak to agricultural experts who can provide answers to agricultural queries.

6. Smart logistics

Smart logistics uses mobile technology to help distribution companies manage their fleets more efficiently reducing costs for farmers and distributors, cutting fuel use and potentially preventing food losses.

7. Traceability and tracking systems

Mobile technology can be used to track individual food products through the supply chain from grower to retailer.

8. Mobile management of supplier networks

Food buyers and exporters can use mobile phones to manage their networks of small-scale growers and help field agents collect information.

9. Mobile management of distribution networks

Distributors of farming inputs such as seeds and fertilizer could use mobile technology to gather sales and stock data, improving availability for farmers and increasing sales.

10. Agricultural trading platforms

Linking smallholder farmers directly with potential buyers through a mobile trading platform could help them to secure the best price for their produce.

11. Agricultural tendering platforms

Online platforms for submitting and bidding on tenders for food distribution, processing and exporting could make the agricultural supply chain more competitive and efficient.

12. Agricultural bartering platforms

Mobile could help agricultural workers in rural areas exchange goods and services and improve communities livelihoods. For rural people with little or no disposable income, exchanging goods, services and skills with community members is an important part of their livelihoods.

How We Made it in Africa

South Korean vertical farm churns out lettuce

by Lloyd Alter

We have been showing conceptual vertical farms for years, but in Suwon, South Korea they have one working and producing vegetables. It is a little three storey demonstration project in a nondescript building...

The vertical farm is no longer just pie in the sky.

article and photos...Tree Hugger

The Buried Diffuser, an improved drip irrigation technique

by Chahbani Bellachheb

Drip irrigation is today worldwide known as a good irrigation water saving technique. But there is a new worldwide patented technology tested in farmers fields in arid lands in Tunisia which uses 3 times less water then drip irrigation to get the same yield. Farmer field trials show that for the same volume of irrigation water, the “buried diffuser” produces 3 to 4 times more then drip irrigation. 

I am the inventor of this technology. The idea of this invention comes from the traditional buried pottery pot (or jar) used by my father and my ancestors. The jars are locally made, in the Island of Djerba. 

The "buried diffuser" is useful for vegetables (like pimentos, tomatoes, water and honey melon, potatoes, etc) and all kinds of fruit, ornamental and forest trees. For the trees the "diffuser" is buried 60cmm in a pit, below the soil surface. For the vegetables the diffuser is buried 5 to 10 cm below the soil surface. 

Beside the water saving the buried diffuser has many other advantages such as: 
 

-no weeds. therefore no need for herbicides, greatly reduced labor needs  

-reduction of phytosanitary problems and treatments

-it works with gravity (0,005 bar) as well as the conventional water pressure (1-2 bars). When using gravity the irrigation is non-stop for many days, inducing an important energy saving because there is no need for a pump.
 

-reduction of irrigation frequency: one time instead of 4 times. For the trees if you have a deep soil (200cm) you irrigate your trees 4 till 8 times per year
 

-The buried diffuser could be used also for the injection of rain water (collected in different kind of small or big reservoirs: small and big dams, hill lakes, etc) in the deep layers of the soil (60 cm below the soil surface). This water injection allows important water storage in the soil of tree plantations. This storage is maintained for a minimum of three years, allowing good growth and production of the trees even if  there is no rain during those 3 years. 
 

This new irrigation technology is the basic technique presented to win in 2009 the UNESCO International Water Prize. 

The buried diffuser will be manufactured by Chahtech S.A, a Tunisian company and will be distributed worldwide beginning this year. In June the company received two awards from the World Bank: Top50SME Award and "Access to Market and Finance Award."

The Buried Diffuser is available for sale worldwide (price: US$5.50 per unit/ FOB Tunisia).

Purshade helps protect pineapples agaist heat stress and sun damage

Grown in hot, tropical climates, pineapples are susceptible to heat stress and sun damage, which has been shown to limit plant production as well as deteriorate or discolor tissue that can render the fruit unsellable.

Purfresh, a leading provider of clean technologies has announced that pineapple growers from major tropical growing regions have achieved a significant reduction in heat stress and sun damage with the company’s solar stress protectant—Purshade®.

Purshade has been engineered to prevent solar damage and heat stress by reflecting harmful wavelengths of solar radiation such as ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) away from the plant, while still allowing transmission of sufficient sunlight for photosynthesis. Laboratory results show Purshade reflects as much as 85–95 percent of harmful UV radiation, and has been shown to keep plant surfaces 7–10 degrees Fahrenheit (3–6 degrees Celsius) cooler than untreated plants.

Purshade is currently being used to protect pineapple crops in the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Mexico, Australia, Costa Rica, the Caribbean, and the United States. In addition, Purshade is being used in trials in the Philippines, Kenya, and Thailand with intentions to commercialize the product. Growers throughout these regions report Purshade’s ease of use and high level of effectiveness has enabled them to discontinue use of more costly, labor-intensive methods of sun protection.

The calcium-based Purshade family of products is easy to mix, apply, and remove; are highly compatible with other products; and can be applied with standard spray equipment. Incorporating a Purshade solar protectant into a preventative spray program, for conventional or organic production, helps maximize the value of every treated acre by reducing solar-related losses, increasing yield potential, enhancing crop quality, and improving water use efficiency.

Purfresh

Farmers plant their hopes on cell phones

by Sam Wambugu

Current hunger and famine being experienced is not unique to Kenya. African agricultural output stands at a meagre 56 per cent of the world’s average.

Lack of access to vital agricultural information, as well as training and advice on topics such as pests and diseases, weather and proven farming practices has been cited as part of the causes of the current problems.

Access to mobile phones is growing dramatically even among those at the base of the economic pyramid, providing a new and powerful channel of communication and the ability to link previously excluded rural communities to up–to-date information.

But will the farmer use this technology? The answer is in the affirmative. Telephone is the only ICT used by the majority of farmers in Africa.

Empirical research in rural Ghana shows that the proportion of households using public community call offices — where available — is around 60 per cent, and average household telephone expenditure is over five per cent of monthly household income. The same research indicates that in terms of agricultural production, prices of inputs such as seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides are the most frequently telecommunicated information.

The mobile phone promises to turn the tide against one of the largest challenges traditionally experienced by Africa’s smallholder farmers.

A marriage between agriculture and mobile phone technology is putting critical information at a farmer’s fingertips.

One of such most successful technologies is arguably the Esoko service that started in Ghana. Individuals, agri-business, government and projects use Esoko to collect and send out market data using simple text messaging.

The technology has now spread its wings to 15 countries including Kenya.

Locally, three Strathmore University female students — Jamilla Abass, Susaneve Oguya and Linda Kwamboka — developed the now popular M-Farm software to link markets and farmers.

The M-Farm, allows farmers to group together through their mobile phones to offer exporters and big retailers large quantities of crops. In addition, farmers save on the cost of inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides by buying in bulk.

And yes, they keep them connected to family during long days in the field during planting and harvesting.

In what has been dubbed ‘pay as you plant’ service, mobile phones are also being used to distribute agricultural insurance products to farmers, most of whom cannot afford conventional insurance.

Kilimo Salama, a UAP insurance product enables smallholder farmers in Kenya to insure their agricultural inputs against adverse weather conditions, such as drought or too much rain.

Using mobile phone technology that links solar-powered weather stations to UAP insurance company, the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture and Safaricom, Kilimo Salama helps farmers to cover the cost of seeds, fertilisers and pesticides by paying an extra 5 per cent of their value.

If their harvest fails due to bad weather, they are reimbursed through M-pesa and can plant again.

In the latest of many recent tapping on technology to bail-out agriculture, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has provided a grant meant to encourage mobile communications service providers to use mobile communications to provide information and advisory services to smallholder farmers in developing countries.

Launched in South Africa this week, the mFarmer fund will be available over a period of two years with an aim of reaching two million farmers living under two dollars a day, by 2013.

The mFarmer Initiative Fund will support projects implemented in India and Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

The Nation

Kenya: Crop insurance via cell phone takes root

In the United States, insurance against extreme weather is seen as so important that Washington subsidises it highly and requires it for farmers who want other government benefits. If American farmers need weather insurance, African peasant farmers need it even more. But the vast majority of African peasant farmers have no opportunity to insure their crops.

Virtually all small farmers in Africa depend on rain for irrigation. Most have no safety net — a farmer planting an acre of corn twice a year can find her family nearly destitute if the crop fails because of drought early in the planting season, or too much rain later on.

Small farmers around the world need many different things to help them survive climate change: seeds resistant to extreme weather and pests, cheap irrigation systems, and better agricultural infrastructure, such as more feeder roads. But one thing that can help small farmers now is insurance. The insecurity of farming sabotages yields even when the weather is good.

Because of the risk, many farmers are unwilling to bet all their money on a crop, so they sow only a portion of their land. Or they use poor quality seeds because they do not want to increase their risks by spending more.

Risk makes it very difficult for farmers to get credit to buy needed seeds, fertilizer, herbicides or insecticides, so their yields are stunted. These are people who can ill afford to get less than the maximum from their plots.

Weather insurance for small farmers has always faced numerous barriers. But throughout east Africa today there are projects finding creative and innovative ways to overcome them.

One of them is a project in Kenya’s southwest that so far insures 22,000 farmers.

There are so few farmers with insurance in Africa that this project is the continent’s largest. It is called Kilimo Salama, which means “safe farming” in Swahili. What makes it work is technology.

Insurance companies have never been interested in microinsurance because the transaction costs are too high. A farmer who wants to insure two bags of seeds — a $10 investment — may be paying an insurance premium of a dollar. If there’s drought, someone will have to visit the farm to verify the farmer’s loss.

The company has to do the paperwork to be able to give the farmer her payout of $10. The insurer’s expense is the same for a $10 policy as it is for a $10,000 policy — too much for only one dollar in earnings. Writing tiny policies is only feasible if the process of signing people up, verifying claims and making payouts is nearly free.

But there are also obstacles from the farmers’ side. Even that dollar’s worth of insurance may be too expensive for many farmers.

Insurance also has a bad name. If small farmers in Africa have heard of insurance — and many haven’t — it’s usually because they know someone who was cheated when a company went bankrupt, an agent ran off with the money, or a middleman stole a payout before it reached the farmer.

Kilimo Salama made its debut as a pilot project in 2009, insuring 200 corn farmers in Nanyuki region. Now it is spreading, and covering wheat, sorghum, cotton, beans and coffee in addition to corn. It is a project of the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, which does research on improving harvests on small farms. The non-profit foundation is financed by the Swiss agri-giant Syngenta. Kilimo Salama also gets money from the International Finance Corporation, a sister organisation of the World Bank.

Syngenta Foundation weather stations like the one in Matanya, Kenya, use solar power and computerised gauges to send out data on rainfall levels.

Kilimo Salama relies on two kinds of technology to reduce transaction costs and build trust with clients. The first is solar-powered weather stations. For decades, Kenya has been dotted with weather stations employing manual rain gauges. Kilimo Salama has modernised 32 of them with solar power and computerised gauges that send out data on rainfall levels, sun and other information.

Each farmer who buys insurance is linked to the nearest weather station — no one is more than 20 kilometres from a station. If the weather station shows that the rainfall was insufficient early in the growing season, or too much late in the corn season, all the farmers in that area get an automatic payout — farmers do not have to file a claim.

If the rainfall was only slightly off, farmers get a small payment. If the weather was extreme enough to destroy their whole harvest, they get the full amount. No farm visits are necessary. (With corn and the other crops that Kilimo Salama insures, historical data show that payouts using weather as an index are about the same as payouts for actual crop damage from weather.) Just as important is what Kilimo Salama uses to sign up farmers and pay out claims: cell phones. Instead of relying on insurance agents, Kilimo Salama’s insurer — insurance company UAP — sells policies in the same stores where farmers buy their seeds, fertilisers and chemicals.

The shop owner is given a camera phone to record the purchase, which instantly sends a confirmation text message to the buyer. At the end of the growing season, payouts go electronically to the farmer’s cell phone account. It is remarkable that even for small farmers, text messaging and online banking are old friends that provide a comfort level with a new programme. The programme uses the M-Pesa money transfer system. M-Pesa’s popularity was why Rose Goslinga, Kilimo Salama’s founder, chose Kenya. The weather stations and cell phones have lowered the cost of writing policies to the point where Goslinga says the biggest cost is sending the text message welcoming the new client.

Kilimo Salama has recruited partners who will pay half the cost of the premium if farmers buy their products. One of them is Syngenta — a mixture of the philanthropic with the commercial that makes some others who work on this issue uneasy.

But it’s obvious why the programme uses partners, as paying the full 10 per cent of their costs for insurance is still too much for many farmers. Insurance may drift even further out of reach as it becomes more necessary. The years of weather data that re-insurers need to price risk will be less relevant to a changing climate, so they are likely to demand higher premiums. And of course, crops will fail more often.

“It is becoming more expensive to insure as climate change progresses,” said Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, an associate director of the Rockefeller Foundation who works on climate change resilience. “But the more people you have insured and the more you can spread the risk the better.”

The main obstacle to insuring farmers, said Goslinga, is that if they have heard of insurance, they don’t trust it.
 “You’re selling a promise,” she said.

So Kilimo Salama built in various mechanisms to win farmers’ trust. Having agro-dealers sell policies means farmers have a familiar person to contact if a problem arises. Kilimo Salama starts its policies very small — farmers can insure a single bag of seeds or their whole harvest — to allow farmers to try out the idea before investing a lot of money in it. Using M-Pesa means farmers know their payment will not get stolen. “If you are developing a new product, you want as little as possible to be new,” Goslinga said. “You want the other parts to be known and trusted.”

Selling farmers on the idea of insurance is labour-intensive. Forty per cent of the project’s budget goes to pay for trainers who work with farmers, a telephone help line and radio programmes about insurance. Kilimo Salama expects that this expense will drop as the product becomes more familiar. It aims to be commercially viable in three years.

Perhaps the most effective form of persuasion is allowing farmers to see that the insurance works. Joseph Ndun’gu farms a bit more than an acre of corn in Laikipia county. He is adventurous; when Kilimo Salama approached him to be among the first farmers to get insurance he readily agreed.

“I had not heard of insurance, but I agreed to it because this area is a bit dry,” he said. It was a good bet. The first year, Kilimo Salama gave the insurance away to farmers who bought four bags of seeds — a $20 expense. When the rains failed, Ndun’gu got $16 back. “We got the payout, and it was correct,” he said. That convinced his neighbours, who bought insurance for their next planting. This is Ndun’gu’s fourth planting insuring his seeds.

Lucy Muriuki sells farming products in Nanyuki and was one of the first two agro-dealers to join Kilimo Salama. “When I first talked to them about insurance, the farmers thought it was a joke,” she said. “But now 80 per cent of the farmers who walk into my shop ask for it.”

As cell phone and mobile money penetration deepens in Africa — and this is happening stunningly fast — the possible reach of insurance products like Kilimo Salama will widen. Goslinga is talking to people in Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda about setting up weather insurance as the technology progresses.

Business Daily Africa

Future farm: a sunless, rainless room indoors

by Arthur Max

Farming is moving indoors, where the sun never shines, where rainfall is irrelevant and where the climate is always right.

The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with meticulously controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in a New York high-rise, a Siberian bunker, or a sprawling complex in the Saudi desert.

Advocates say this, or something like it, may be an answer to the world's food problems.

"In order to keep a planet that's worth living on, we have to change our methods," says Gertjan Meeuws, of PlantLab, a private research company.

The world already is having trouble feeding itself. Half the people on Earth live in cities, and nearly half of those — about 3 billion — are hungry or malnourished. Food prices, currently soaring, are buffeted by droughts, floods and the cost of energy required to plant, fertilize, harvest and transport it.

And prices will only get more unstable. Climate change makes long-term crop planning uncertain. Farmers in many parts of the world already are draining available water resources to the last drop. And the world is getting more crowded: by mid-century, the global population will grow from 6.8 billion to 9 billion, the U.N. predicts.

To feed so many people may require expanding farmland at the expense of forests and wilderness, or finding ways to radically increase crop yields.

Meeuws and three other Dutch bioengineers have taken the concept of a greenhouse a step further, growing vegetables, herbs and house plants in enclosed and regulated environments where even natural light is excluded.

In their research station, strawberries, yellow peppers, basil and banana plants take on an eerie pink glow under red and blue bulbs of Light-Emitting Diodes, or LEDs. Water trickles into the pans when needed and all excess is recycled, and the temperature is kept constant. Lights go on and off, simulating day and night, but according to the rhythm of the plant — which may be better at shorter cycles than 24 hours — rather than the rotation of the Earth.

In a larger "climate chamber" a few miles away, a nursery is nurturing cuttings of fittonia, a colorful house plant, in two layers of 70 square meters (750 sq. feet) each. Blasts of mist keep the room humid, and the temperature is similar to the plants' native South America. After the cuttings take root — the most sensitive stage in the growing process — they are wheeled into a greenhouse and the chamber is again used for rooting. The process cuts the required time to grow a mature plant to six weeks from 12 or more.

The Dutch researchers say they plan to build a commercial-sized building in the Netherlands of 1,300 square meters (14,000 sq. feet), with four separate levels of vegetation by the end of this year. After that, they envision growing vegetables next to shopping malls, supermarkets or other food retailers.

Meeuws says a building of 100 sq meters (1,075 sq. feet) and 14 layers of plants could provide a daily diet of 200 grams (7 ounces) of fresh fruit and vegetables to the entire population of Den Bosch, about 140,000 people. Their idea is not to grow foods that require much space, like corn or potatoes. "We are looking at the top of the pyramid where we have high value and low volume," he said.

Sunlight is not only unnecessary but can be harmful, says Meeuws. Plants need only specific wavelengths of light to grow, but in nature they must adapt to the full range of light as a matter of survival. When light and other natural elements are manipulated, the plants become more efficient, using less energy to grow.

"Nature is good, but too much nature is killing," said Meeuws, standing in a steaming cubicle amid racks of what he called "happy plants."

For more than a decade the four researchers have been tinkering with combinations of light, soil and temperature on a variety of plants, and now say their growth rate is three times faster than under greenhouse conditions. They use no pesticides, and about 90 percent less water than outdoors agriculture. While LED bulbs are expensive, the cost is steadily dropping.

Olaf van Kooten, a professor of horticulture at Wageningen University who has observed the project but has no stake in it, says a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of tomatoes grown in Israeli fields needs 60 liters (16 gallons) of water, while those grown in a Dutch greenhouse require one-quarter of that. "With this system it is possible in principle to produce a kilo of tomatoes with a little over one liter of water," he said.

The notion of multistory greenhouses has been around for a while. Dickson Despommier, a retired Columbia University professor of environmental health and author of the 2010 book "The Vertical Farm," began working on indoor farming as a classroom project in 1999, and the idea has spread to several startup projects across the U.S.

"Over the last five year urban farming has really gained traction," Despommier said in a telephone interview.

Despommier argues that city farming means producing food near the consumer, eliminating the need to transport it long distances at great costs of fuel and spoilage and with little dependency on the immediate climate.

The science behind LED lighting in agriculture "is quite rigorous and well known," he said, and the costs are dropping dramatically. The next development, organic light-emitting diodes or OLEDs, which can be packed onto thin film and wrapped around a plant, will be even more efficiently tuned to its needs.

One of the more dramatic applications of plant-growing chambers under LED lights was by NASA, which installed them in the space Shuttle and the space station Mir in the 1990s as part of its experiment with microgravity.

"This system is a first clear step that has to grow," Van Kooten says, but more research is needed and people need to get used to the idea of sunless, landless agriculture.

"But it's clear to me a system like this is necessary."

Forbes

Kenya tests renewable energy farming

by David Njagi

A solar powered facility could elevate Kenya as the first country in Africa to establish a green farm that uses renewable energy.

Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) says farmers are expected to have renewable energy farm in June this year that is also expected to serve as a tourist attraction.

The facility, which is expected to take $4 million (about Sh32 billion), will pave way for an agrarian system that is less dependent on rain-fed agriculture, according to Kari director Ephraim Mukisira.


He said every operation on the green farm, which will include crops and the rearing of livestock, will be powered by solar.

A hundred acres of land at Kari Muguga have been set aside to accommodate the facility, which is already running trials with a new greenhouse technology imported from the South Korean Government, and which the institution says is attractive to urban agriculture.

"This is a new concept that demonstrates that research and science is moving away from traditional to more exciting settings like the green villages," says Dr Mukisira. "The future of agriculture is to increase productivity and conserve the environment."


According to Dr Patrick Gicheru, the director Kari centre, Kabete, the concept borrows from a World Bank funded carbon benefits scheme in Western Kenya that assesses the possibility of carbon sequestering from both tree and cover crops.

While farmers have to wait for about 20 years to win carbon credits through the planting of trees, Dr. Gicheru says the new model has an edge over the later because it will enlist farmers into the carbon trading scheme through crop production that enriches soil fertility.

"We are trying to find out if there are crops that farmers can sequester carbon from while at the same time ensuring that soil fertility is improved," says Dr. Gicheru. "This can enable us to have food security as well generate income from carbon trading."

But there is a catch to the new found windfall that could leave many of them on edge. Last week's launch of the Africa Carbon Exchange facility raised hopes that farmers could be the big winners in green energy and afforestation projects.


But National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) says farmers will be awarded through carbon trading depending on the types of crops as well as green innovations.

This leaves floriculture and horticulture farmers in a tricky spot because the trading scheme does not recognise the two due to the string of production rules that bind them, according to Malwa Langwen, NEMA's director for compliance and enforcement.

"The carbon trading scheme will obviously not consinder farmers who have invested in floriculture and horticulture alone," says Langwen.

"They will have to go a step further and show an appetite for planting trees as well as innovation in renewable energy projects."

According to Langwen, a partnership between the Africa Carbon Exchange facility and NEMA is in the pipeline that will vet trends in environmental conservation and well forested farms for award of carbon credits.

At an event to mark the launch of the Going Green initiative in Nairobi, Langwen joined other stakeholders in showcasing some of the innovations that may attract the interest of the facility, where eight categories were presented with awards for showing leadership towards a green economy.

Among institutions recognised by the Voices for Environmental Campaign were Mater Hospital, Sun N Sand Beach Resort, Severin Sea Lodge (EA) Limited, East Africa Breweries Limited, Safaricom Ltd, Bamburi Cement Limited, Oshwal Academy and Nakumatt Holdings Limited, among others.


Daily Nation

Phone cartoons bring know-how to poor farmers

by Emeka Johnkingsley

Animated cartoons watched on mobile phones could be the way to get health and farming messages across to peasants and poor smallholders, say researchers.

They could help people who can't read tackle anything from increasing their cowpea yields to avoiding exposure to cholera, through an initiative launched this month (1 March).

Scientific Animations Without Borders, spearheaded by a team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States, produces narrated videos for mobile phones. The production costs of the animations are low, and the narration can be recorded in local languages and dialects.

"This is a very different paradigm from some other current development projects, where US-based educators are flown to another part of the world, interact with people in the field for a few weeks to several months, and leave," said Barry Pittendrigh, a member of the animations team and an entomology professor at the university.

Pittendrigh said: "Our short-term goal is to provide useful educational materials that educators can download off the Internet and place on their mobile phones. In those cases where the trainers or farmers have cellphones with Bluetooth capability, the videos can be transferred over to these individuals."

The first videos demonstrate safe methods for controlling or eradicating insect pests from cowpea in five West African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, where millions depend on the cowpea for their livelihoods, according to the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA).

These methods use locally available materials. For example, in one video, a farmer uses fruits from the neem tree, Azadirachta indica, to create a liquid insecticide that can be sprayed onto crops.

Manuele Tamo, a scientist in charge of IITA's Benin branch, said: "We are working to translate the videos into the different languages of the five West African countries. We also want to try and capture the different cultural accents in these languages."

One challenge, he said, involves the use of mobile phones by women.

"What we discovered in Benin and other places is that the phones used by women farmers are not theirs. When they do have phones [of their own], these can hardly play videos or do not have the Bluetooth technology for transferring them."

Some local groups are working with his team to enable easier transfer of the videos.

"We are also looking at the possibility of contacting cellphone companies in the region to see if they can send videos as MMS [multimedia messaging service] messages," Tamo said.

The team is building an open access library of videos that can be distributed around the world through email or the project's website, SusDeViki (Sustainable Development Virtual Knowledge Interface).

SciDevNet

Kenya to adopt soil-less, mid-air potato-breeding technology

by James Karuga

The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) has introduced a new farming technology for breeding multiple disease free potato tubers in a bid to achieve a widespread take-off in productivity for the country’s potato farmers.

In Africa, according to a 2007 report by Food Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Egypt has the highest potato output at 2.6 million tonnes.

Kenya ranks 8th, harvesting around 0.8 million tonnes a year from an estimated 120,000 hectares. This translates to an average yield per hectare of 6.7 tonnes.

But output could be higher, says Kari, which reports that currently only one to two per cent of Kenyan farmers use certified potato breeds.

Over 90 per cent of Kenyan farmers still plant potato varieties with an optimum yield of only seven to 10 tonnes per hectare. The varieties are also susceptible to diseases and virus attacks and are not economical in the long run.

But the challenge of making better breeds available to farmers is hampered by the low numbers of reproduction laboratories in Kenya. Only the Agricultural Development Corporation in Molo and Kisima Farm in Timau breed new potato varieties. Meanwhile, many private breeders shy away from commercial potato tuber reproduction due to the high costs involved. Most local private breeders opt to breed seeds such as maize, which are less expensive.

Kari hopes that by importing a high-yield potato breeding technology it can attract more private breeders into the industry. Dubbed aeroponics, the new technology grows potato tubers in “air” without the use of soil.
Adopted by Kari from Lima in Peru last year, the technology is an improvement on the conventional way of breeding potato tubers from the soil.

In Peru it was introduced by the International Potato Centre. The tubers are grown in liquid chemical solutions with extra nutrients that increase resistance to disease. The extra nutrients include potassium nitrates, calcium, and phosphate minerals.

The technology consists of a meshed box partitioned into two. The partitions have holes through which the tubers grow. The tubers in the lower box partition produce an extensive root network. The lower box has a timed mist spray that releases liquid nutrients every five minutes. The box is wrapped with black plastic to create darkness but is aerated to ensure the tubers efficiently absorb the oxygen and carbon dioxide they need to grow. The aeration results in more tuber production.

Project specialist Joseph Ngaruiya said using aeroponics guarantees a farmer five times more tubers per plant compared to when tubers are planted in the soil. Also, “it guarantees sequential harvesting of tubers for six months,” said Mr Ngaruiya.

Tubers planted in the soil guarantee an optimum three months of yielding tubers. They are also vulnerable to pest and disease attack. The screen house enclosure of the aeroponics technology prevents such attacks.

The technology has been tested at Kari, Tigoni, using a 15m by 5m meshed box with 600 plants. Each plant is capable of producing 50 tubers. This amounts to 30,000 tubers produced in six months.

When Kari planted 5,000 of the tubers on a piece of land in a trial, the researchers harvested 14 bags of 50 kilogrammes each on the first harvest. In the second and third generation harvests they forecast yields of 140 and 1,400 bags respectively.

However, the technology is pricey: a 15m by 5m screen box with its associated accessories costs just over Sh250,000. The Aeroponics nutrient solution costs around Sh4,000.

Kari’s Tigoni potato research centre offers technical assistance on mixing the solutions. By introducing this technology to Kenya, Kari hopes to produce higher quality, disease free tubers for farmers.

Business Daily Africa

Farmers in South Africa's Limpopo province innovate for climate change

by Fidelis Zvomuya

Julius Nhematandane has seen many things in his life, but he can't remember a drought as terrible as the one that ruined Limpopo's most recent harvest. Born into a farming family, Nhematandane's life has always been tied to the soil. At the age of 54, however, he says he has never seen "such severe drought" in the northern province of South Africa.

Over the past decade, Limpopo has had 60 percent less rainfall than normal, according to the department of agriculture. "To be a farmer is to live with risk. Each agricultural season brings with it opportunities as well as risks," says village leader Nhematandane. "In a good year, I can harvest up to 15 bags of maize on my one acre plot, and make good money on my investment."

But to cope with the periodic droughts his region is experiencing, he uses techniques that help ensure more stable harvests and income. He grows beans alongside maize in case the rains, and his maize crop, fail. And he staggers the dates he plants crops in his fields.

"As you can see my crop fared slightly better than some of my neighbours'," he says. "The field I planted early last year survived; the others did not." Nhematandane has also tested a conservation farming technique called 'potholing', which involves placing seeds, fertiliser, water and lime in specially dug holes, boosting yields thanks to the concentration of inputs in an enclosed space. This has allowed him to at least grow some corn in today's dry conditions.

"Our climatic conditions have changed," he explains, adding that uncertainty is the biggest constraint for local farmers. "Frosts or hailstorms can wipe out crops at any time of the growing season. A year of normal rainfall (around 600mm) can be followed by a year when rain falls in flood proportions, or by drought." "So as farmers we also must adapt and make sure that we are able to feed the nation."


South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) predicts southern Africa will be severely affected by climate change over the next 70 years, with temperatures increasing by up to six degrees Celsius and rainfall dropping by as much as 40 percent in some areas. "Agriculture and biodiversity will experience a particularly negative impact," says CSIR researcher Constansia Musvoto.

In a region where 70 percent of the population are smallholder farmers, livelihoods are under threat from more frequent and longer droughts, higher risk of crop failure, and shrinking pasture and cropland due to water shortages.

Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba, Limpopo's minister for agriculture, says that while drought can't be prevented, its impact can be mitigated. "We support farmer-based initiatives such as the one taken by Mr Nhematandane. We are trying to make sure that we link him with the Agricultural Research Council so that this can be linked with scientific research," she explains.

Letsatsi-Duba says thousands of people are short of drinking water, and crops worth 10 million rand have failed. The department spent 24 million rand ($3.2 million) in the 2009-2010 financial year to implement drought relief in its five provincial districts. The money was used for de-silting 10 earth dams for livestock water; equipping 130 boreholes with windmills, pumps and water-storage tanks; building and repairing 80 drinking troughs; and providing food packages.

But government intervention isn't the only solution. Nhematandane, a widower living with his four children, is just one of 1,000 farmers in his village who are struggling with uncertain weather conditions. Ga-Selala is a typical village, home to around 2,000 families suffering from poverty and malnutrition. Most people earn a living by working as labourers in fields belonging to farmers in neighbouring villages and further afield. But when the planting and harvesting seasons are over, these jobs become scarce, especially from May through September. Then villagers have to migrate or survive on roots, tubers and fruits they gather from the forest.

Most farmers in Limpopo say they are experiencing the worst drought in more than 50 years, magnifying the province's chances of suffering another economic crisis due to lost revenue. Cows are dying by the thousands in the baking sun, and crops are being lost before their seeds even break through the soil.

"Our planting season usually commences when the summer rains are received, usually around the end of September or beginning of October. But now we don't have a clue," Nhematandane says. Yet in the midst of this increasingly desperate situation, he continues to harvest and sell some produce to his neighbours. He attributes this to his efforts to spread out harvests by planting crops at different times - also known as succession planting - and his use of varieties with a range of maturing dates.

"I have seen that maize is one of those crops that is only 'good' for a few days. If you want longer periods of production, consider staggering the planting. In other words, plant a small block, wait a period of time, and then plant the next block," he says. He explains that rather than following a set calendar schedule - for example, planting every week - it is best to watch the development of crops and plant a new block when the previous one is half to an inch tall.

Minister Letsatsi-Duba says staggered planting also helps regulates the uptake of nutrients. "In this way, the system will never have too much or too little nitrogen for the plants to consume. Staggering cropping techniques are as applicable at the small scale as they are at a commercial level."

Nhematandane's experience shows how they can work in practice. "This is the only way to survive as a farmer," he says.

Reuters AlertNet

New method to predict drought tolerance in maize seedlings

Scientists have developed a new method for measuring drought tolerance in maize. By comparing the shoot-to-root ratio in seedlings stressed by low water, scientists can predict whether a plant has the right mix of genes for adapting to drought conditions.

The ideal drought-resistant maize should have a higher ratio of root surface area compared to leaves and stems. Developing enough adult plants to determine this feature is a costly investment.

The research, conducted by Nathinee Ruta at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, tested whether the root to shoot ratio in seedlings subjected to water stress would provide the basic genetic information about the general pattern of root system architecture leading to drought avoidance.

The findings were reported in the July/August 2010 edition of Crop Science, published by the Crop Science Society of America. The study was conducted at Peter Stamp’s laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, using maize populations developed by the breeding program of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), headquartered in Mexico.

These maize lines were developed to increase yield in drought-prone environments such as Sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, the data on seedling roots could be compared with yield trials in drought environments that had been generated throughout several years.

The roots of these seedlings grew on filter paper in growth pouches and were measured non-destructively using digital image analysis. The system was kept simple to allow for a handling of 200 plants per day. This was a sufficient amount of data to allow researchers to locate the positions of the genes that control root growth, and link them to other genes in the maize genome.

Most genetic studies of water stress of maize tend to focus on the above ground portion of the plant, with the roots not easily accessible, particularly under drought conditions. With little known about the correlation between root structure and drought tolerance, this research offers promising prospects for using root traits in predicting maize yield under water stress.

“There is probably an optimal maize ideotype for each combination of soil type and climate condition,” stated Andreas Hund, the senior scientist leading the project. “We aim to define these ideotypes for contrasting environments and identify key loci allowing us to select for more efficient root systems.”

Research is ongoing at ETH to improve techniques to measure genetic relationships between leaf and root surface area as they respond to environmental conditions. A strong focus will be on how these factors change over time or with respect to environmental stresses, such as extreme temperatures or drought.

Crop Science Journal