A Professor of Plant Pathology at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB) ,Ololade Enikuomehin has advocated for Plant Protection Policy, as part of measures to protect tropical crops against fungi-induced diseases and reduce cost of production by farmers in Nigeria
The former Acting Vice-Chancellor and one-time Deputy Vice-Chancellor of FUNAAB suggested the policy as part of his recommendations while delivering the university's 71st inaugural lecture titled "Tending The Inaudible : The Management of Plant Afflictions With The Endowments of Nature", on the Alabata main campus of the Institution in the Ogun State capital
Enikuomehin during the first inaugural lecture by the Department of Crop Protection and 14th lecture in the College of Plant Science and Crop Production, stressed the need for researchers and policy makers to give more attention to plant products and environment-based protection practices
He expressed concern over the information gap existing between researchers and the indigenous farmers in the various farming systems in the country
According to the don, "the farmer's indigenous knowledge of the different plants and their potentials as well as the peculiarity of the respective ecosystem is very important in developing efficient crop protection strategies"
He called for renewed effort targeted at engaging farmer's indigenous knowledge in order to unravel and exploit the hidden potentials of nature for improved crop protection
The lecturer in his recommendations, emphasised the need to harness numerous research findings into a compendium, so as to make it easy for those who want to make reference and get information on efficacy of different plant products for the development of crop protection strategies in tropical farming systems
He also recommended an increase in the funding of research on the use of plant and environment-based strategies that would be fully developed to the point of adoption and use in large scale farming amongst others
The professor who had successfully supervised five Ph.D and eleven (11) Master's degree students, equally stressed the need for Federal Government to strengthen and fund FUNAAB and the National Agricultural Research Institutes to enable them to contribute more to plant protection in the country
He reiterated the need to start involving rural farmers in other viable plant product and environment-based crop protection practices saying "these people still have indigenous knowledge that require to be tapped"
Acting Vice-Chancellor of FUNAAB, Prof. Olusola Kehinde speaking with newmen on the sideline of the inaugural lecture, said that the university at appropriate time would make its various research findings available to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture for inclusion in policies formulation for the use of farmers, so as to boost food production in the country
No comments:
Post a Comment