Researchers launch new seed facility to boost maize research in Africa

A new maize seed storage facility aimed at bolstering Africa's maize research was launched in eastern Kenya on Thursday.

The state-of-the-art seed storage cold room is expected to help store high-value seeds with superior traits that are resilient to an array of diseases, insect-pests and climatic stresses such as drought, heat, and low soil fertility that are crippling maize production and affecting livelihoods of maize farmers in Africa.

"The facility is a boost to a strong seed system that enables seed breeders develop and disseminate improved seed for the farmers to plant and improve their livelihoods," the Director General of the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization, Eliud Kireger, said.

He said the new facility will boost maize breeding work being jointly done by his organization and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), a global maize research organization.

Cold rooms are like large-scale refrigerators that are used to preserve seed by maintaining low temperatures, thereby impeding environmental or biotic factors from affecting the seed viability for long periods.

"For research work, seed needs to be stored between six months to 10 years for future use; this requires high level of preservation and safety to enable breeders to work with more diverse materials, develop new maize germplasm, and store this effectively for further use," Kireger said.

"The facility will help expedite movement of improved maize germplasm to national partners and seed companies across Africa and beyond, and to reach farmers much faster with improved maize varieties," CIMMYT Director General, Martin Kropff, said.

Kropff said the cold room will help in maintaining the required temperature to help the seeds maintain their viability up to 10 years, a great boost in the maize research work in Africa.

Kropff said crop improvement involved work with seed, which serves as a bridge to different generations of crop plants.

"It is important to have a facility that will help breeding programs to produce and store large quantities of valuable seed with no loss in quality and also improve effectiveness and efficiency of our breeding work in Kenya and Africa," Kropff noted.

The current bottleneck in the availability of seed of improved maize varieties is the lack of early generation seed (Breeders and basic seeds).

CIMMYT produces and distributes seed, and the cold room will facilitate this distribution and eventual access to seed by farmers.

Stocks of seeds of frequently used genotypes can be stored for longer periods and hence save time and resources needed in frequently producing the seeds.

"Of late we had experiences where the germination of some seed stocks drastically deteriorated in a period of one year. This would require production of fresh seed every six months but with the cold room this would no longer be an annual obligation imposed by seed longevity and viability," Kropff said.

He said the real time response to partner's request for germplasm by CIMMYT seed systems will be possible since the new cold room will be able to store seed of frequently used germplasm in reasonably large quantities without fear of loss of viability.

It was not possible to store large quantities in the old cold room because the seed would lose viability in a few years.

Kireger said that improved seed quality translates directly to improved plot quality and improved data quality.

He said current practice for trials requires more seed than necessary and also requires additional labor costs.

"But with high quality seed, plots can be packaged and planted at closer to 110 percent target stand and thinning requirements are significantly reduced," he said.

Currently, Kiboko research station, Kenya's major crop research center, has more than 30 hectares of maize breeding nurseries from which seed of elite maize germplasm is harvested every crop season.

With the increase in breeding programs that use different generations of seed, which include inbred lines and hybrids, the cold room at Kiboko station is an important asset for maintaining the quality of seed and for improving the efficiency of seed exchange between various maize breeding programs in Africa. Endit