War against hunger: Africa inaugurates Centre for Agric Innovation

NaijaAgroNet:

Hunger and poverty may soon be a thing of history in Africa, courtesy the Green Innovation Center, which was inaugurated at AfricaRice in Benin early this month; NaijaAgroNet reports.

The centre aims to boost agricultural productivity, increase the incomes of smallholder farmers and create job opportunities, particularly for youth and women in African countries namely: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Togo, Tunisia and Zambia.

The Green Innovation Center is supported by the Federal German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), in partnership with other institutions such as Benin Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, and AfricaRice.

BMZ has given 2.7 million euros (almost US$3 million) to AfricaRice to implement the centre’s activities in 2016 and 2017, according to Bernard Marc Winfried, a knowledge management specialist at AfricaRice.

He also said that in Benin the initiative would facilitate the exchange of knowledge and interaction between researchers and development experts in 17 communities, stressing that the centre will strengthen the agricultural innovation system by promoting partnerships and developing an operational framework for innovation.

Minister for BMZ Gerd Müller, said during the inauguration that agriculture does not only need water and fertiliser but also needs knowledge and innovation. 

Banji Boye/ED ops

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pix; center plague

Rotation speed, bad news for Red Planet pioneers

NaijaAgroNet:

A team of scientists from Holland, Germany and the United Kingdom (UK’s) University of Manchester have revealed the importance of a circadian body clock that matches the rotational speed of the earth in a new study, reports NaijaAgroNet.

According to the Media Relations Officer, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Mr. Mike Addelman, these group of scientists studied animals in which variation in a single gene dramatically speeds up the natural circadian cycle from 24 to 20 hours.

“It is the first study to demonstrate of the value of having an internal body clock which beats in tune with the speed of the earth’s rotation,” he said.

The researchers, Addelman said, released animals with 24 hour or 20 hour clocks into outdoor pens, with free access to food, and studied how the proportion of animals with fast clocks changed in the population over a period of 14 months.

This, he said, allowed the team to study the impact of clock-speed in context of the “real-world” rather than indoors.

Mice with fast-running clock, experts said, gradually become less common with successive generations, so that by the end of the study, the population was dominated by animals with “normal” 24h clocks.

The research has potentially important implications for human health:  clock-disruption associated with abnormal work and lighting conditions, such as night shift work leads to health problems, such as increased risk of Type 2 diabetes.

The scientists pointed out that these studies now extended to the potential implications of space travel in the future, citing for instance, that the Martian day is 37 minutes longer than that on earth.

Professor Andrew Loudon, from The University of Manchester said the rotation speed of Mars may be within the limits of some people’s internal clock, but people with short running clocks, such as extreme morning types, are likely to face serious intractable long-term problems, and would perhaps be excluded from any plans National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has to send humans to Mars.

“The prospect of settling on Mars is a somewhat distant prospect. But if we ever do get to the Red Planet, I suspect we will be faced with body clock problems; those people with abnormally slow body clocks would be best suited to living there,” Prof. Loudon said.

Correctly, he pointed out that ticking body clock is essential for normal survival in the wild, and this has to be in phase with the rotation speed of the earth.

“Animals with clocks that do not run in synchrony with earth are selected against. Thus, the body clock has evolved as an essential survival component for life on earth,” he explained.

 Isaac Oyimah/GEE

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Allocating N4n to Aso Rock clinic is unrealistic – Rep Pondi

NaijaAgroNet:

The Honourable member representing Burutu Federal Constituency of Edo State at the Federal House of Representatives, Mr. Julius Pondi has said the budget would not be realistic, especially given the alleged fraudulent allocations quoted in the 2016 appropriation bill, reports NaijaAgroNet.

He cited for instance the allocation of N4bn to the maintenance of Aso Rock clinic, arguing that it does not make sense to vote such amount on Aso Rock clinic when at every little ailment those the clinic are meant for will be on their way for medical tourism.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that the sum of N3,889,015bn was initially budgeted for purchase of vehicles in the first budget, but this was changed downwards to N340m in the corrected version, while N3,914,197,062bn, which was not in the first budget document was now accommodated for purported annual maintenance of Villa facilities.

Pix: Hon. Pondi
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Syrian farmers need donors’ support

NaijaAgroNet:

The Syrian farmers need donors’ support now than ever, says the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), NaijaAgroNet reports.

The United Nations Agriculture agency made this disclosure in a press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet on Friday in Rome, noting that with the war in Syria now approaching its sixth year, agricultural production has plummeted and food supplies are at an all-time low, pushing millions of people into hunger. 

“FAO today called on governments to provide a boost in funding targeted at helping farmers keep their lands in production to prevent the situation from deteriorating even further,” part of the statement read.

The agency's appeal comes ahead of a 4 February international donors' conference in London being convened by the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Kuwait and the United Nations to mobilize support for humanitarian work in Syria.

"The conflict has decimated the agriculture sector, which has had a major impact on food supplies and markets. Currently over half of Syrians remaining in the country are food insecure, with one in three people unable to afford basic foods," said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.

NaijaAgroNet recalls that as national food production has collapsed, food prices in Syria have soared with prices in some markets for wheat flour and rice jumping by as much as 300 percent and 650 percent, respectively, over the past 18 months.

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