15 Oct 2017

Farmers have been implored to conserve plant genetic resources on their farms by ploughing them and thereby making them active.

Plant genetic resources are indigenous plant seeds often ploughed as crops such as varieties of sorghum like segaolane and  indigenous trees found in the wild like motsentsela.

Keeping indigenous seeds active in the ploughing cycle enables the development and evolution of materials under the influence of the local environment and helps to protect them from disappearing from the local farming systems.

Speaking at the workshop on farm genetic diversity conservation in Molepolole on Thursday (October 12) , deputy permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Dr Keoagile Molapong said the contribution of farmers to plant genetic resources conservation was appreciated and needed to be integrated into conservation efforts made by the ministry.

“The best means of their conservation is when the materials are still available within the farming system,” he said.

He said there were only a few remaining traditional landraces present in agricultural systems in Botswana, noting that some of them are conserved at the national gene bank at Sebele.

Nevertheless he stressed that his ministry wanted to return those landraces from the gene bank to renewed life in the farm to be grown, so as to maintain them as ‘on-farm’ conservation in order for the crops to continue their evolution.

He further pointed out that local farmers have inherited those landraces, together with the indigenous knowledge associated with them from their forefathers.

Since the plants had adapted and selected for the natural environment, he emphasised it would be disastrous to lose them as they would not be able to mine their unique traits and use them in developing new varieties.

He however called on all stakeholders to be involved in safeguarding those important natural resources of the country.

Curator of National Gene Bank, Dr Tiny Motlhaodi explained that due to continued loss of local crop diversity which was being replaced by modern varieties, the national gene bank was established in 1989 at the Department of Agricultural Research.

The workshop, she said, was meant to sensitise farmers on conservation of those seeds and other plant reproductive material.

Plant genetics are reservoirs of traits for improving yield, quality resistance and adaptation to stress and these traits are only found in farmers, she added.

Meanwhile, farmers appreciated the workshop, saying they were happy to go back to their roots and start planting indigenous seeds even though hybrid seeds were now favoured by government, something that had not went well with them for a long time. ENDS