Stakeholders urge more allocation for biofortified seeds

• Published date: 24 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

Stakeholders in the agricultural sector yesterday advocated an increased budgetary allocation to seed production, especially in development of biofortified crops to combat malnutrition.

Speaking at a policy roundtable on biofortification in Abuja, the Country Manager of Harvest Plus, Yusuf Dollah Fu'ad, said Nigeria has some biofortified crops which include vitamin A enriched potato, Vitamin A enriched cassava and Vitamin A enriched maize.

He said an iron and zinc enriched millet was recently released, as they were working on the zinc rice.

While explaining that biofortification is a process where there is an increase in the micronutrients in vitamins levels and in staple crops through a conventional breeding technique, he said Harvest Plus tries to complement existing nutrition initiatives, but using a food based approach through the process.

He noted that biofortification has been in Nigeria for almost 10 years, and the roundtable aims to confer most especially with the policymakers, to try and see budgetary allocation to seed production in the past three years.

He said the reason they wanted to see the allocation to seed production is to know if it is growing or is it shrinking.

'If it is growing, then we ask the government to do more, because we need to create...