Rwanda should be able to fully provide own seeds for farming by 2020, according to the Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB). To accomplish this, RAB will need to intensively replicate already developed improved seeds and speed up research to develop new varieties.
The goal is to end the practice of importing maize, soya and wheat seeds, according to RAB director-general Mark Cyubahiro Bagabe.
“We have for long depended on seed imports and that is dangerous,” Bagabe told The New Times last week. “By 2019 or latest 2020, we should put a lid on importation of seeds.”
The Head of RAB’s Northern Province’s Zone, Jean Claude Izamuhaye, said they got about 27 private investors in greenhouse technologies for seed production and there are other alternatives that will help them settle the seeds issue sooner through the use of new technologies consisting of direct transfer of in vitro plantlets from laboratory to the soil.
He noted that the trials made through the application of the new technology showed that about 20 tonnes of seeds can be produced per hectare.
