Catherine Njuguna
27 June 2009
Arusha — Farmers in the Lake Zone region of Tanzania have joined in the fight to protect their cassava crop from deadly cassava diseases. Armed with mobile phones, the farmers will send out monthly text messages to researchers on incidences of the diseases on their farms ensuring they receive timely advice on the steps to take.
The farmers from ten districts in the Lake Zone region in Tanzania, will receive training on recognizing the symptoms of the two deadly cassava diseases, the Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) and the Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) said the coordinator of the initiative, Innocent Ndyetabura of the Lake Zone Agricultural Research and Development Institute (LZARDI). The initiative goes by the name Digital Early Warning Network (DEWN).
According to Ndyetabura, the farmers, who are organized in farmer groups, will receive sim cards provided by Zain that will be topped up every month - a sim card per group. They will observe their farms for the presence of the two diseases and note any changes in their spread. Every month the group will meet and share on the changes they have observed in their farms and text their collective findings to LZARDI and a local partner he said.
"DEWN makes use of a very simple technology that is readily available to farmers to keep track of the spread of the two diseases in addition to improving communication between farmers and researchers," said Ndyetabura. The training which kicked off on Monday in Mwanza will target 60 farmer groups in Bukoba, Misungwi, Muleba, Magu, Kwimba, Kibondo, Bukombe, Sengerema, Geita and Urambo districts selected because they have little or no reported cases of Cassava Brown Streak Disease.
"We have selected districts that currently have low or no incidences of the disease but are under threat because we want to understand how the disease spreads and how long it takes to spread," said Ndyetabura.
When more than 10 percent of the members of a group spot a diseases that was previously not there or an increase in the disease prevalence, the project team will visit the area to verify the information and advice the farmers on what to do, he said.
The project is part of and feeds into a bigger initiative tracking the spread of the two diseases in the Great Lakes countries of Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania coordinated by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). And this is part of yet another bigger four year initiative led by the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the Great Lakes Cassava Initiative (GLCI), that aims at reviving the cassava production in these countries.
The first group to receive the training was the Wakulima wa Mihogo group (WAMI) in Ngombe village, Misungwi district. The farmers were already familiar with the symptoms of Cassava Mosaic Disease hence the training focussed more on the symptoms for the Cassava Brown Streak.
The symptoms include yellowing of the lower leaves and along the secondary veins, brown streaks along the stem - hence the name brown streak, and in advanced stages, a dark brown dry rot in the root tubers.
Enoch Mosorwa, the secretary of the WAMI group said he stopped growing cassava in 2006 after his crops were destroyed by the Cassava Mosaic Disease, as did most of the farmers in the village. He has started growing cassava again with the introduction of improved cassava varieties that are resistant to the disease.
"I have heard of this new disease (CBSD) but have not seen it on our farms. I understand it is very serious as it destroys the whole plant including the root tuber. It is important that we know the symptoms early and take the necessary measures so our crops are not destroyed again," he said.
According to him the cassava is very important to their survival because it is tolerant to drought and performs well in poor soils. "Maize is not doing well in our soils which are exhausted," he said. "And we are not able to afford fertilizer or manure."
According to Edward Kanju of IITA, the Lake Zone region is one of the areas hardest hit by the Cassava Brown Streak Disease in the country.
"The disease is devastating as it affects the root tubers, the most important part of the cassava crop," he said. "With CMD, there is a reduction in the general yield of the crop but Brown Streak causes a dry rot in the tuber, rendering them inedible."
The disease has been around for a long time but was, until recently, confined to low altitude areas along the coast of East Africa between Kenya and Mozambique, he said. It is spread by the whitefly and through planting infected materials.
Once a farm is infected by the disease, the farmers are advised to harvest the crop before nine months to ensure there is minimal damage to the root tuber. And most important, to change to varieties that have shown resistance to the disease. Unfortunately, these varieties are lacking in the Lake Zone.
People are suffering in the Lake Zone and are urgently in need of uninfected planting materials of cassava varieties that are tolerant to the Cassava Brown Streak and Cassava Mosaic diseases said Esther Masumba of CRS and the GLCI Country Programme Manger in charge of the Lake Zone. She gave an example of Ukerewe Island that was once an exporter of dried cassava chips to the mainland but not anymore.
"Cassava Brown Streak Disease has caused havoc in this island and today, the people of Ukerewe are buying dried cassava chips to make flour for Ugali, their staple food," she said. "Other districts that are hard hit are Bunda and Musoma."
"The most promising varieties against the two diseases and which we are encouraging the farmers to grow are mkombozi and Nigeria," she said. "The other is the MM96/0876 whose trials are at an advanced stage."
According to Masumba, GLCI aims at reviving the cassava production by providing disease-free planting material to over a million farmers in the Great Lakes countries. In Tanzania, the initiative will provide over 600,000 farmers with clean planting material of diseases resistant varieties.
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