Farmers lament decline in research

Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) President Lenworth Fulton says the restructuring of individual commodity boards has stunted critical research activities in the sector.

In 2018, the Government amalgamated all agricultural commodity boards into the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulation Authority (JACRA). However, addressing the Yam Farmers’ Biotechnology Workshop recently at Northern Caribbean University (NCU) in Mandeville, the JAS president asserted that the move has negatively affected agricultural research.

“We have thrown out the baby with the bath water – the group dynamics that these boards had on the (individual) groups that drive research and give researchers a captive group to get out better products,” Fulton said.

“We will have to work with the universities and the extension arm of the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA),” he told yam farmers meeting under the theme ‘Taking Biotechnology to Farmers for Sustainable Yam Production’.

Noting the importance of research to crop cultivation, the JAS president advised yam farmers to use their phones to capture observations in the field and label and transmit them to professors to conduct research, using graduate students to develop solutions.

In addition, Fulton called on biotechnologists to assist in improving the yield per acre for yam – reducing it from the current rate of planting 5,000lb to 500lb, ideally.

“Using tissue culture, we want our farmers to use biotechnology to segregate their activities – grow yam for consumption or grow yam for planting material,” he stated.

The workshop was a collaborative effort of NCU, The University of the West Indies, State University of New York, RADA, and the Scientific Research Council.

Workshop presenters included NCU graduate student Yanque Yip, who has developed an award-winning technique to grow yams in a predetermined shape.

UWI graduate students also presented on various health applications of yam, including ‘Yam and Breast Cancer’, ‘Yam and Hypotension’, ‘Yam and Prostate Cancer’, and ‘Yam Glycaemic Index and Diabetes’.

Workshop participants also viewed tissue culture samples carried out by NCU faculty member Dr Gordon Lightbourne.