CRI to release two new tomato varieties for cultivation
The Crop Research Institute (CRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has received approval to release two new tomato varieties for cultivation in Ghana.
This has become necessary after years of research by scientists from the Institute with financial support from the Korean Programme on International Agriculture (KOPIA) and the Government of Ghana through the Obaatanpa Care Programme.
Certified seeds of the new varieties, which have been christened: ‘CRI Kwabena Kwabena’ and ‘KOPIA Tomato,’ would be available next year to enable farmers to have access for cultivation.
The new varieties took 55 days to mature unlike the current varieties, which took approximately 80 to 90 days to mature, Dr Michael Kwabena Osei, a Senior Research Scientist at CRI, said.
A yield per hectare is 20 tons, three times the yield of the current varieties, which normally produced between 7.5 and 10 tonnes per hectare.
“The new varieties are disease tolerant especially to the Tomato Leaf Blight disease for both early and later stages, and also do well in both the major and minor seasons, if best agronomic practices are undertaken to get the full potential of the varieties,” Dr Osei said.
They do well in the forest and transitional zones covering the Ashanti, Bono, Bono East and Ahafo regions and had the prospect to perform well in other agro-ecological zones, if good farm practices were adhered to.
Addressing farmers at a training workshop on the cultivation of the new tomato at Akomadan in the Offinso North Municipality of the Ashanti Region, Dr Osei, the Lead Researcher, said the new varieties would enable farmers to produce the quality and quantities of tomatoes Ghana needed for both domestic and industrial use.
That would help address the risk marketers went through in importing tomatoes from Burkina Faso and other neighbouring countries to meet national demands.
He said the fruit size of the new varieties was very big with a lot of solids and less seeds.
The brix value, which is the total soluble solids most tomato processing factories look for, is between 6.3 and 6.8, far above the standard value of 4.8.
This means it would play a dual purpose for both the fresh markets and processing factories.
Dr Osei said the CRI was mandated to come out with crop varieties that would help address food challenges and encouraged farmers to get their seeds from the right sources.
Recycling of seeds often brought about segregation and low yields as well as the varieties opening themselves for biotic and abiotic stresses (diseases and pests), he said, and urged the farmers to avoid that.
Mr Lim Jung-Taek, the Korean Ambassador to Ghana, said achieving greater self-sufficiency in tomato production with enhanced productivity had become one of the urgent national tasks for the Government.
It was the reason KOPIA and CSIR-CRI embarked on a joint research to breed improved varieties of tomato that were adaptable to the Ghanaian environment.
Mr Jung-Taek said tomato was one of the most important food crops in Ghana and it was evident that the country was the second largest consumer of the produce after Greece.
That called for improved efforts by Ghana to produce enough to feed her people both in the fresh state and processed form, he said.
Source: GNA