Morogoro — SOKOINE University of Agriculture (SUA) has come up with disease resistant bean that guarantees farmers with increased yields while boosting their incomes.
Department of Crop Science and Horticulture Lecturer at SUA, Dr Luseko Chilagane said the new disease resistant bean is a result of research of angular leaf spot disease that caused losses to farmers.
"The aim of the research was to improve the two common bean landraces for angular leaf spot disease and establish Tanzanian common bean landraces collection (germplasm)," he said.
Dr Luseko said the three-year project was funded by Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) at the tune of 70m/-.
He said the new bean varieties are currently labelled as SUA 1 up to SUA 18. The names of bean varieties will be unveiled later after conducting and completing testing in the farm.
"The 18 different varieties of bean will be taken to the farmers' environment to check their characteristics especially their resistance to the disease, the characteristics loved by consumers and the increase in yields," he said. Dr Luseko said the yield losses can go up to 100 per cent in case of severe infestation and where susceptible varieties were grown.
"We were motivated by the poor harvest but mostly looking in the seed catalogues and saw that there are many types of bean seeds which are not in the market," he said.
He said In Tanzania two common bean landraces namely Kablanketi (Soya Kijivu) and Soya Njano (Njano Golori) are the popular types being preferred by consumers almost all over the country and even beyond borders.
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"The problem with these landraces is their susceptibility to diseases including angular leaf spot and low yield potential," said Dr Luseko.
He also said Tanzania had many landraces of common beans whose characteristics are not well documented which limit their potential of being utilised by farmers in their cultivation and breeders in improvement of the common bean germplasm.
Dr Luseko said the research is in the stages of classification of the characteristics of the improved beans and the selection of those that will do well in the farmers' environment.
The production of old bean varieties is low not reaching even one tonne per hectare but after the improvement it will increase to three tonnes per hectare.
He said the project enabled the development and selected 18 different advanced common bean lines which are resistant to some strains of angular leaf spot disease and which also combine characteristics from the two market class common bean types 'Kablanketi' and 'Njano Golori'. He said the project is to go further to have a station multi location field testing of the advanced common bean lines coupled with participatory selection.
