Tanzania boosting vegetable production to enhance food security

Posted on : Thursday , 30th July 2020

In a bid to boost production of vegetables, Tanzania signed an agreement with the World Vegetable Center, an international nonprofit institute for vegetable research and development.

The agreement was signed in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam between the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Gerald Kusaya, on behalf of the government, and the World Vegetable Center director for the East African and Southern region, Gabriel Rugalema, said a statement by the Ministry of Agriculture.

The government intends to boost production of vegetables in order to improve the nutrition of people and enhance food security, said Kusaya shortly after the agreement was signed.

The statement said the agreement entailed three areas of collection, processing and storage of improved seeds for increasing vegetable production in the east African nation.

According to the statement, the agreement also involved research on vegetable seeds that were resistant to diseases, pests and hostile environment, including climate change and its impacts.

Kusaya said there were 14 training institutes and 17 agricultural research centers under the Ministry of Agriculture that will be engaged towards the development of vegetables as entailed in the agreement.

For his part, Rugalema said the World Vegetable Center had between 1997 and 2018 produced 18 hybrid seeds for different types of vegetables, including tomatoes, eggplants, spinach and nigrum.