CEMAC Agricultural Ministers visit IRAD Ekona

The delegation, led by Cameroon’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, expressed satisfaction with the plantain sucker multiplication project.

Cameroon’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Essimi Menye and his counterparts from Congo-Brazzaville and Central African Republic have visited the Ekona-based Institute for Agricultural Research for Development (IRAD) to acquaint themselves with the level and progress of the Plantain Sucker Multiplication Project currently going on at IRAD. The visit came on the heels of a CEMAC conference of Agriculture Ministers holding in Douala, Cameroon which aimed at harmonising rules and research findings in the domain of seed production within the CEMAC zone.

Minister Essimi Menye of Cameroon, Central African Republic minister of State for Agriculture, Mrs. Marie Noelle Koyaza and Congolese Minister of Agriculture, Rigobert Maboudou expressed satisfaction for what they described as a commendable job being done by IRAD in the production of improved plantains plantlets using the in-vitro technique capable of producing 50,000 plantain suckers.

After a guided tour of the “screen house” where the plantain plantlets are being produced, the rubber technology laboratory and other installations of the Ekona research centre, the delegation accompanied by the Secretary General at the South West Governor’s office, Clement Fon Ndikum, proceeded to the four-hectare plantain seed multiplication farm in Ekona where the Minister said MINADER went into a convention with IRAD for the production of five million plantain plantlets giving that the government intends to launch a plantain programme.

According to Essimi Menye, if production is to be increased, there is the need for the production of seeds to meet up with the projected increase. He said the intention is to increase the value chain of the product. The Chief of Centre of IRAD Ekona, Dr. Kingsley Etchu, in a presentation of the Research programmes and activities of IRAD Ekona assured that the centre is upbeat to meet up with the terms of the convention.

By Roland Mbonte