By VALENTINE OFORO
THE Tanzania Agriculture Research Institute (TARI) has embarked on a project for the research and production of improved seeds varieties for numerous horticulture crops that flourishes well across the country.
The development which focuses to heighten performance of the economic sub-sector in the county is being implemented by the state-owned agriculture research institute at its two centers of TARI Tengeru (Arusha) and TARI Mlingano (Tanga).
Giving an interview to this publication during the ongoing 48 Edition of the Dar es Salaam International Trader Fair (DITF 2024) the Director General of TARI, Dr Thomas Bwana said to start with, the project is focusing to produce improved seeds for spices, among others.
He communicated that the ongoing project has so far resulted into constructive production of a number of improved seeds for spices crops, the much-needed development which is projected to bring about major transformation in the production of the crops that attracts potential markets at both, local and international market platforms.
“We’re very thankful as the government, during the current financial year has injected our side with enough budgets to enable thorough research and production of improved seeds for horticulture crops,” he said.
With the increased budget, he informed that TARI was currently working to facelift infrastructures and facilities at its laboratory in Arusha-based Tengeru centre, targeting to transform it to the country’s excellence facility for horticulture.
And he added that through the launched initiative, the institute will research and produce improved varieties for numerous popular vegetables to enable the involving growers to expand their production scope and productivity.
“The horticulture sector attracts huge markets and the country has been endowed with suitable agro-climatic zones for the production of the crops, but the farmers are facing a number of challenges which need to be addressed, including shortage of enough improved seed varieties,” he expressed.
Expressing TARI’s vision, Dr Bwana said the future focus is to research and develop key technologies to assist the local farmers to improve productivity, but also to attain additional value chain for various strategic crops.
“The mission is to enable the local farmers to use the technologies to advance their production levels to further heights, to become crops producers and crops additional value developers, the move which will enable them to stand a chance to benefiting accordingly from all economic potentials that the sector offers,” he observed.
During this fiscal year, the government through the Ministry of Agriculture set aside a total of over 41.39bn/- to implement a series of strategies for elevating performance of seeds research and production sector.
Among others, the set amount meant to facilitate the major projects for the construction of ultra-modern gen bank at the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) Selian centre, installation of vast bioscience lab at the TARI Mikocheni centre in Dar es Salaam, to sponsor a total of 485 agricultural pundits to acquire high education levels in pertaining to seed research, as well as to rehabilitate the TARI Tengeru center lab.
The other targets, is to produce and distribute to the farmers a total of 5.7 million cuttings of cassava in all regions where the crop flourishes, to continue with the general task of installation of irrigation infrastructure at a total of 19 research farm, occupying a total of 1,120 hectares.
“The sum will also be injected to to finalize construction of a special facility for the production of banana tree seeds through tissue culture technology at TARI Maruku center,” according to TARI DG.
Impeccable statistics from the Tanzania Horticulture Association (TAHA) shows low pace in the country's production trend for the two economic cash crops, spices and vegetables.
According to the statistics in question, during 2016/17 the country produced a total of 1,298,388 Metric Tons (MT) of vegetable, whereby in 2017/18 production slightly increased to 1,595,489MT, which was an increase of about 297,101MT.
During 2018/19 vegetable production in the country developed to at least 1,926,927MT.
On the side of spices, the production rate stagnated at about 22,062MT between 2016/17 and 2017/18, followed by 38,987MT in 2018/19, a slim increase of only 16,925MT.
However, from such a lackluster production trend, Tanzania had so far managed to pocket at least 310,982,000 USD from exportation of vegetables in a period from 2001 to 2019.
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