Firm Introduces Local Plant Root Initiative to Boost Banana Production in Africa

Gilbert Ekugbe

Seeding The Future (STF), a nonprofit organisation that seeds and supports innovative solutions that could improve the global food system has announced plans to integrate Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) to boost banana production in Africa.

The founder of Seeding the Future Foundation, Mr. Bernhard Van Lengerich, said in a statement that the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) was among the growth grand finalists for the award of $100,000 for its project on integrating bio-inoculants to boost banana production in the East African Highlands.

Lengerich said that the project was meant to introduce locally isolated AMF species into banana-based production systems and catalyze the development of a commercially sustainable and scalable process for its production and distribution to smallholder farmers in Eastern Africa for a sustainable banana food system, food security and nutrition.

He said the project is a consortium of a multidisciplinary team from Africa and the European Union.

He noted that the award is part of the Seeding the Future Global Food System Challenge–an initiative that sought to inspire and support passionate, creative, diverse, and multidisciplinary teams to create game-changing innovations that will help transform the food system.

“The submitted ideas for all award categories are very innovative with high impact potential to create a safer, nutritious, sustainable, and equitable food system, resulting in food that is trusted, affordable and accessible by consumers,” he added.

A Systems Agronomist at IITA, Mr. Manoj Kaushal, said: “The goal of this intervention is to have a commercially sustainable distribution of AMF primed micro-propagated banana plantlets. The investment in AMF will be offsetted by many benefits in both short and long term.”

The project path to scalability and economic feasibility is a multi-stage process through the private sector with capacity building and support from international donors / NGO partners and the government.