hybrid to save cooking hours,fuel

 hybrid to save cooking hours

Kenyatta University researchers in collaboration with international partners are testing and evaluating cooking hybrid banana dabbed Naritas that will take shorter time to cook saving families fuel costs.

Narita is an acronym derived from Naro - the National Agriculture
Research Organization of Uganda and IITA – International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) that is high yielding and disease resistant hybrids.

 

The variety will be resistant to black sigatoka which is rated as the most devastating foliar disease in bananas.


Plant biotechnology lecturer, department of biochemistry, microbiology and biotechnology, Kenyatta University Mary Mwangi said that the research that has taken over 20 years will see the Kenyan families enjoy a soft matoke meal.

 

The cooking varieties developed under climate smart banana project will see introduction of climate resilience, high yielding non-GMO plantains into the Kenyan value chain, said Lecturer Mary.


“The varieties are not Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s) – they are hybrids," added Lecturer Mwangi who added that the breath taking research had taken over 20 years to be completed.

“We have only known the indigenous cooking bananas that are hard even after
long hours of being on fire. We are also planning to introduce Narita, alongside a variety of sweet banana that is not only sweeter than what’s on the market but also resistant to panama disease. Panama disease is known to cause huge losses to banana farmers in Embu, Murang’a and Kirinyaga. All these efforts are geared towards making Kenya a matoke eating family to diversify from the normal Ugali and rice also improving their nutrition value” lecturer Mwangi added.

The climate smart banana project (Clismaban), seeks to establish varieties that can withstand the changes in climate, bananas that will survive high and low temperatures as a way of addressing food security.

The researchers said the variety is likely to be in high demand and therefore give farmers better earnings.

“We have a banana variety that can withstand to the adaptation of the climate whether low or high so as to address food security and also survive on the changing temperatures,” she added the variety that will
address food security and also be market potential”.

The project is planned to kick in three counties; Kirinyaga, Murang’a and Embu after the evaluating performance at the Kenyatta university laboratories, have so far been tested in Uganda and Kenya where it is doing well.

So far at the Kenyatta University laboratory there are 27 new hybrids that have been developed through crossbreeding of which 25 have been evaluated for agronomic performance in Uganda.

For the first time in Kenya we have embarked on similar evaluations.

We are also assessing their potential for adoptions by farmers,consumers and traders in Kenya through a participatory gender-responsive approach.

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varieties where farmers will narrow down to four depending on the farmer’s choice and the area.

The project is being rolled out through participatory varietal selection, whereby gender-integrated farmers will work closely with the researchers to identify the most desirable varieties based on agronomic and sensory evaluations.

Prof. Grace Ngare, gender expert said that bananas are customarily considered a women’s crop but with the introduction of Naritas, this could change hence the need to guard against conflict in farming families.

 “When banana farming turns commercials, men will pick interest and seek to control proceeds from the venture. Besides, gender shifts arising from commercial banana farming have generated observable Gender-Based Violence within the households as observed in Meru. Its high time families started embracing sharing roles and information.

Kawanjara commercial village agribusiness cooperative society vice
chairman Francis Mugo a beneficiary said the way for valuable projects
to be felt is dealing with groups and not individuals citing that the
400 members will be able to spread the word of a new banana variety in
the region.

Mercy Wanja, a member, added that the banana variety is likely to be a
hit in the market saying bananas grown in the area are small in
bunches and raised little in cash.

Wanja said the participatory approach taken by the project will
solve the violence in homes since men dominate revenue generating crop farming and management of proceeds leaving the woman to do donkey work.

"We are very happy to see that this project has taken a step of engaging
gender both male and female to create awareness to avoid violence". Wanja added.

The project is co-funded by the Kenyan government and European Union to a tune of Sh. 83 million and is expected to run for three years.



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