Availability of healthy seed production can be maintained through a combination of farmer practices, internal and external quality assurance mechanisms and appropriate and cost effective external regulatory processes. We want to generate evidence about the effectiveness of the net tunnel technology in enhancing farmers’ access to quality planting material.   Working with the National Agricultural Research Institutes of Tanzania (Lake Zone and Zanzibar) and Uganda we are implementing a three-year project (“Keeping disease free vines closer to the farmers” or “Kinga Marando”), which aims to validate the net tunnel technology among farmer-multipliers. Virus indexed starter plantlets undergo mass in-vitro propagation, and are then acclimatized and grown under screen-house conditions by Crop Bioscience Solutions Ltd. and BioCrops Ltd. TC laboratories in Tanzania and Uganda respectively.   We are supporting Decentralized Vine Multipliers (DVMs) to construct net tunnels and maintain virus indexed planting material inside the net tunnels; then multiplying it out in the open filed for sale to root producers. The DVMs are being equipped with knowledge and skills on vine conservation, quality management such as positive and negative selection of planting material, and business enterprise skills. We are also training farmer-multipliers and inspectors on the use of appropriate standards and inspection protocols for production of quality declared seed (QDS).   We are also conducting a special study aimed at determining over at least two years (four seasons) the rate of virus degeneration in sweetpotato planting materials multiplied under net tunnels compared with planting material multiplied in open fields. In western Kenya net tunnels initially piloted under research managed conditions were found to be successful in keeping TC plantlet sourced materials protected from aphid and whiteflies and thus free from re-infection. Now we are testing this technology with farmer multipliers to understand the factors which might influence further scaling up.  

Project Members: Margaret McEwan, Simon Jeremiah, Kwame Ogero, Jan Kreuze