Dr Ayoni OGUNBAYO, coordinator of the Agricultural Technologies and Innovations Scaling Up Project for Increasing the Resilience of Production Systems and Family Farms in West and Central Africa (TARSPro) program, visited the Regional Centre of Excellence in Fruit and Vegetables (CRE-FL) on September 29 and 30,. The visit was part of a follow-up tour of the program’s activities, aimed at directly observing ongoing initiatives and identifying challenges with a view to finding solutions.
During this visit, the coordinator of the TARSPro project learned about the activities of the Agricultural Technologies and Innovations Park (PTIA), highlighting crops such as tomato seeds of the variety FBT 1, soybeans, sesame, okra, amaranth, millet, forage crops, legumes, orange-fleshed sweet potato and cassava. He also explored the park mechanization workshop to understand all operations.
“The development of the plots has not been a quiet long river. Challenges include pests, delays in acquiring OFSP seeds, security of the storefront (animals, bush fires), irrigation issues, etc. However, the park is doing well.” stressed the person in charge of monitoring PTIA, Dr Etienne Sodré,
Another program of this visit was the community immersion hubs (CIH) implemented in Banfora, in the Cascades region. Also wanted as part of the activities of TARSPro, these PICs aim to allow users to know the best technologies and the best techniques, in order to appropriate them. Among several innovations present, the Intensive Rice Farming System (SRI), was visited on the Karfiguela plain, with more than 300 producers. It was about showing them how to produce a lot of rice with very few resources. According to the monitoring officer of these PICs, this necessarily involves the choice of varieties, the preparation of the plot, with the contribution of organic matter in addition to fertilizer, the establishment of the nursery, the best density of seedlings, water and weed management, etc. The rice seeds promoted were among others, the varieties KBR and ORYLUX, whose productivity is between 8 and 10 tons per hectare.
At the end of this visit, the delegation saw another device of PICs in the Feed Lot of INERA, with as a bonus, varieties of pannicum, brachiaria and cassava.
Recall that earlier, before the stage of Bobo-Dioulasso, the coordinator was able to touch the activities carried out in the Climato Intelligent Village (VIC) of the village of Ouda, a hundred km from Ouagadougou.
SRI sowing demonstration on the Karfiguéla plain
The TARSPro project, launched in Burkina Faso in April 2021, is implemented in four (04) other countries, including Benin, Mali, Niger and Chad. Funded by the Swiss Cooperation over a period of 4 years, it was conceived by CORAF and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation to support food and nutrition security for fast-growing populations. The project foresees better deployment of cutting-edge technologies and innovations (T&I).