Centre for Crop Improvement Inaugurated at Legon(Inside page) 14 March, 2008

Story: Michael Donkor
THE University of Ghana, Legon has inaugurated a centre to train experts to help improve food production in Ghana and other countries in the sub-region.
Known as the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI), at the College of Agriculture of the university, it was established with a grant of $5.78 million from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
WACCI is expected to train 40 experts in plant breeding in the first 10 years of the programme.
Inaugurating the centre, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof. Clifford Tagoe, called on Agricultural Research Institutions to collaborate with farmers to increase crop production.
He said if this was done it would go a long way in ensuring food security in the sub-region.
Prof. Tagoe said the issue of food security was crucial to the survival of mankind hence the need to train more human resources in that direction.
He said relying on the traditional way of farming would not ensure food security hence the need for an effective collaboration between farmers and experts in plant breeding.
The Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Institutions, Miss Elizabeth Ohene, expressed her gratitude to AGRA for the grant.
She said plant breeding was a notable area but a lot of governments did not commit themselves to it.
The Director of WACCI, Prof. Eric Danquah, said it had been recognised that capacities in plant breeding, including both conventional and modern technologies, in sub-Saharan Africa were neither sufficient nor properly integrated to fully capture the benefits of the plant genetic resources that were conserved.
He said the country’s ability to meet the millennium development goal for food security would depend on how governments and institutions confront the entire food production value chain.