THE Tanzania Coffee Research Institute (TaCRI) has proved beyond reasonable doubt that coffee researches contribute to increasing coffee productivity both in terms of quantity and quality.
Proving this was a presentation by a Senior Researcher at TaCRI, Dr Jeremiah Magesa when addressing the 12th National Coffee Stakeholders Meeting held on 16th- 17th June in Dodoma on Wednesday.
Through this presentation, Dr Magesa said research carried out at his Institute has come out with inventions a total of 23 new varieties of coffee seedlings out of the 19 are for Arabica coffee while the remaining four are for Robusta coffee.
According to him, the said seedlings are resistant to the coffee deadly diseases namely Coffee Berry Disease (CBD) and Coffee Leaf Rust (CLR) for Arabica coffee and Coffee Wilt Disease for Robusta coffee, they require fewer fungicides and herbicides thus reducing production costs, give higher yields per unit area, produces coffee with bigger bean sizes with good flavours like by many people across the globe thus always fetching good prices in the world market.
Coming to hybrid seeds production he said TaCRI has completed respective research and currently they are producing an average of 1000 kilogramme of the same which is equivalent to a total of 4 million such seedlings.
He further said research to invent coffee seedlings which can resistant droughts is going on well in Rombo, Tarime, Kasulu and Mbozi districts where's out of the ten (10) varieties of coffee seedlings tested three (3) have proved to resist droughts adding what remains is for the Ministry to approve the same later to be planted by farmers across the country.
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Briefing the stakeholders on research conducted by his Institute to find out new areas where's a coffee can be cultivated he said already soil analyses have been done in sixteen (16) regions across the country where coffee can be grown naming such regions to be Ruvuma, Njombe, Iringa, Mbeya, Rukwa, Katavi, Kigoma, Kagera, Mara, Manyara, Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Tanga, Geita, Mwanza and Morogoro whereby 15, 000 hectares have been earmarked for expansion of coffee cultivation.
On other achievements which his Institute have realised all aiming at increasing coffee productivity he said already a total of 387,593 farmers have been trained countrywide on good coffee cultivation practices, and a total of 12, 371 extension officers have been trained on how to produce good quality coffee while a total of 4,235 farmers promoters have been trained adding that with cooperation with other stakeholders a total of 62.128 million seedlings of the new varieties of coffee have been produced and distributed to farmers across the country.
In future plans he said his Institute is planning to produce a total of 20 million coffee seedlings of the new varieties the same to be distributed to farmers each year starting from the year 2022/23 this aiming at reaching the target of producing 300,000 tons of coffee by 2025/26.
