Don advocates access to scientific data, funds, to train plant breeders

To ensure food security for future generations and sustainable crop production, a Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Prof. Francis Showemimo, has called for access to scientific data, resources, and collaborative platform for breeders to be able to quickly and efficiently identify the genetic variations that will allow them develop new varieties with improved traits. He made this call while delivering the 79th Inaugural Lecture of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Ogun State, titled: “Science-Art Interface: A Plant Breeder’s Perspective”, held at the Oluwafemi Balogun Ceremonial Building.
He argued that funding and lack of adequate infrastructure are major problems militating against breeding breakthroughs, hence the need for the government to create a special intervention fund dedicated to agriculture, especially to train plant breeders and related discipline. According to him, creativities following imaginations need natural, hybridisation, mutation, molecular and genomic tools to achieve set breeding objectives, while noting that it is unbelievable the stress that plant breeders go through in this part of the world as a result of good and protective government policies.
He suggested that rapid training and retraining of plant breeders should be encouraged, particularly in the utilisation of the new biotechnological, molecular and genomic tools to enhance crop improvement aimed at solving food crises, stressing that plant breeding courses must be taught from practical point of view to achieve scientific manipulations, artistic impression and business mindset, to improve the economy and well-being of humanity. The lecturer, who is of the Department of Plant Breeding and Seed Technology, College of Plant Science and Crop Production (COLPLANT), FUNAAB stated that “The joy of all plant breeders is to create, redesign, remodel and produce new crop cultivars for commercialisation that is, the artistic design of intricate science of plant breeding”.