Nigeria develops road map to address crop production rates and disease outbreaks
The NASC team and collaborators at one of its past events. (NASC)
For more information, see the Third Quarter issue of Seed Today.
By Shem Oirere
Nigeria has set out on a journey toward a sustainable seed quality assurance regime that will help address the persistent challenge of low farm production rates and disease outbreaks especially in the crop sub-sector.
Nigeria has partnered with the Netherlands government to enhance the performance of the West Africa country’s seed sector under Collaborative Seed Program (CSP), which is a key pillar of the Nigeria-Netherlands Seed Partnership.
This partnership is under the umbrella of SeedNL, an international initiative that makes it possible for a “powerful collaboration between relevant Dutch organizations and international partners to achieve urgent changes that contribute to SDG2 by 2030.”
Through the CSP, Nigeria hopes to achieve excellence in its seed quality management system.
National Seed Road Map
This drive is led by Nigeria’s apex seed regulatory body, the National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC) with support from the public and private sector in anticipation of finally establishing market driven seed standards, developing guidelines for seed manufacturers and consumers, as well as evidence-based quality control systems.
Furthermore, the CSP, which is a four-year program, is a key pillar in Nigeria’s National Seed Road Map, a guideline for seed value chain actors focused on increasing farmers’ access to and use of quality seed of improved varieties according to NASC.
“The program aims to contribute to improved sustainable income, food, and nutrition security of rural households in Nigeria, by improving farmers’ access to and use of quality seed of improved varieties,” NASC says on the CSP profile page.
Core Components
The core component of the CSP is the piloting of at least three main models to confirm their viability and sustainability as the best route toward ensuring seed quality assurance in Nigeria, a country where “the gap between demand and supply of quality seed of improved varieties continues to be more than 90-95% for all crops, except for open-pollinated maize varieties for which the market is saturated,” according to the NASC.
The models being piloted are focused on internal seed quality control, private seed certification, and NASC-led licensed seed inspection.
These models, if approved as sustainable, are likely to boost Nigeria’s initiatives in ensuring high-quality seeds in the domestic market as well those imported from neighboring markets of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional political and economic union of 15 countries in West Africa.
First Model
In the first model that Nigeria is piloting, launched in March 2024 through NASC, the emphasis is on internal seed quality control among manufacturers and suppliers and specifically seed companies.
During the piloting phase, NASC will take the lead in “developing a pilot framework, designing a training curriculum, establishing guidelines, creating oversight and auditing frameworks, and conducting training sessions for internal quality assurance officers.”
The activities are expected to be completed by November.
Second Model
The second model in the pilot project is focused on private seed certification as a viable route in ensuring seed quality assurance.
Piloting of this model is spearheaded by NASC and Extension Africa, a research-based ag-tech platform that provides private extension services to value chain actors, in this case Nigeria’s seed value chain players.
“Key activities include selecting a third-party company, defining terms of reference, setting up a tool-based reporting platform, deploying licensed seed inspectors (LSIs) across target locations, and conducting random field verification,” NASC says.
The outlined activities were timed to coincide with the end of cropping season that started sometime in February 2024.
Third Model
The program’s third model in the drive to achieve seed quality assurance in Nigeria is focused on the NASC-led licensed seed inspection.
The Council is leading the piloting of this model with some of the activities targeted at the “hiring field agents, equipping them with standard work tools, and directly uploading inspection data onto a centralized database.”
“The proposed SQA models, if successfully implemented, will contribute significantly to ensuring high-quality seeds are available to farmers, thereby enhancing agricultural productivity and food security in the country,” NASC says. “Infrastructure and economies of scale of a wide diversity of seed sector stakeholders, farmers’ access to and use of quality seed of new and improved varieties farmer remains limited, which contributes to crop productivity in Nigeria continuing to be low.”
Overcoming Challenges
NASC has in its current master plan admitted the existence of challenges such as human, technical, and operational capacity, including the available seed laboratories and vehicles in regional offices, that the Council says, “are not yet fully equipped in accordance with the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) nor able to cope with the industry’s demand.”
“Therefore, the NASC is unable to meet the national and diverse demand for seed quality assurance services by seed companies, seed producers, community-based seed production (CBSP) schemes and local seed entrepreneurs.”
NASC, which now focuses on a few major cereal crops, says the “seed quality standards and protocols have not yet been developed for all crops; for those that have been developed, their implementation is limited.”
Standards, protocols, and the use of digital applications, including the Seed Tracker and Seed-Codex are required to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of seed quality assurance systems.
“Stakeholders, particularly those within intermediary and informal seed systems engaging in seed production of crops of interest to the nation’s food and nutrition security, other than the major cereals, are hampered in accessing seed quality assurance services and are unable to produce and market certified seed,” NASC says.
Over the next five years, NASC proposes to expand the decentralization systems and modalities for seed quality assurance supported by Seed Tracker and SeedCodex technologies that have been piloted and tested in at least five crops, covering multiple seed systems and at least five states in Nigeria.
Furthermore, NASC says its seed quality assurance services are funded through government budget and that there is limited linkage between the Council’s “operational budget and the delivery of services such as field inspection, laboratory testing and accreditation of internal seed quality control systems of seed companies and seed producers.”
“The fees paid by seed companies and producers for NASC services do not directly cover the costs of those services but are considered government revenues while payments from individual seed producers for field inspection and seed lab testing are not feasible.”
Providing Quality Seed
The Dutch government, through Wageningen University & Research, Nigeria’s development partners, and other non-governmental organizations are investing in technical projects to promote and disseminate quality seed of improved varieties in the West Africa market working with the NASC and more than the 314 registered seed companies in Nigeria.
For seed companies, high quality seeds and a sustainable seed quality assurance procedure would be all they need to increase their production levels that are currently estimated at less than 1,000 metric tons of seeds annually.
NASC concludes the proposed SQA models, if successfully rolled out and fully embraced, “will contribute significantly to ensuring high-quality seeds are available to farmers, thereby enhancing agricultural productivity and food security in the country.”
