Zimbabwe: Challenges Reshape Tobacco Production Landscape

Source from:  The Herald 02/21/2010

THE Tobacco Research Board is yet to recoup its lost status after emerging battered and bruised from a decade of economic distress, which has grossly dented its capacity to among other things, develop new tobacco varieties. This scenario has forced the board to restrict activities only to operating maintenance breeding programmes to keep adequate stocks of released varieties and the precious germplasm pool vital in the implementation of new variety development projects. In a paper jointly done by TRB assistant general manager -- Research and Extension, Enoch Mudzengerere and senior plant breeder -- Plant Breeding Division, Dr Lewis Machida, the board concedes that the agrarian revolution brought a host of challenges. "At the financial level, research depended largely on a levy from growers and merchants, which contributed more than 80 percent of the board's recurrent expenditure requirements. "By 2008 levy contributions, compromised by hyperinflation, were an insignificant one percent of recurrent expenditure but improved to 18 percent following the adoption of the multiple-currencies in 2009," said the statement. On the human resources level, the TRB was particularly vulnerable to brain drain and from the 2003/2004 season, the breeding programme was drastically reduced and only critical projects were continued, the TRB said. Other factors outside the economic realm, for instance, the land reform, did not take into account the standard rotation requirement of tobacco, which led to more intensive land utilisation with shortened rotations, increased disease pressure and accelerated loss of nutrients. Incidentally, tobacco is considered the most damaging crop in any given rotation sequence. "There has been an increase in the neglecting of 'tobacco dead periods' culminating in the resurgence of diseases like tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) previously controlled through hygiene and stalk destruction for aphid-transmitted viruses. "The exponential increase in the number of growers without a corresponding increase in training and extension services to provide the requisite farming skills, and many other challenges associated with new ventures; for example institutional, financial, viability and logistical; have changed and re-shaped the tobacco production landscape," read the communiqué. But the stalled advancement of the tobacco industry in the past decade has not been attributed to variety shortages only. Statistics produced by the TRB indicate that the national yield for the period 2000 to 2008 was 1 700kg per hectare, which is lower than both the latest research yields of 4 000kg per hectare and the national average yield of 2 090kg per hectare for the period 1980 to 2008. This somehow shifts blame from lack of new varieties to other factors like the growing area, weather and the management component that obviously has a bearing on the yield and quality of the leaf. In 1994, the Tobacco Trade Association, Zimbabwe Tobacco Association and TRB established the "Variety Release Protocol" in line with the drive to increase hectarages and the concomitant need to gather information on the performance of the variety in the field and at the floors. This too was affected by the land reform. Similarly, the Co-operative Cultivar Trials (CCT) that require specific growing sites and grower expertise were disrupted. The TRB also contends that representation of growers at variety release meetings needed to be reviewed in line with the phenomenal increase in the number of growers associations from one to six. "To compound the woes, there have been recent developments regarding the 'Recognition of Varieties' by Seed Services which, if implemented, would further complicate and delay variety release," said TRB. But the TRB is not taking the challenges lying down -- it has expanded CCTs from the traditional three sites to seven, representing the slow, medium and fast ripening areas and the "geographic limits" of tobacco in Zimbabwe. Of course the latter should provide information on the performance of varieties in areas previously presumed to be marginal for tobacco farming and the gathered information should illuminate the likely performance of tobacco in predicted increasingly drier Southern Africa climates. Usually the traditional allocation of varieties following application by growers has been superseded by events and varieties shall therefore be allocated strictly on a "first-come-first-serve" basis until the allocation limit is achieved each season. Additionally, growers can access open release varieties from Kutsaga Seeds or the Zimbabwe Tobacco Seed Association and the former operates from Kutsaga Research Station and the auction floors. "Growers, growers associations, contractors and merchants have been allocated attendance days at Kutsaga Research Station to facilitate closer interaction with the breeders and other researchers. "The focus of the TRB's breeding programme has been recently sharpened by the creation of a dedicated Plant Breeding Division with six professional breeders," the TRB revealed. Finally, a separate Seed Production Division will now handle all non-breeding activities including experimental release, seed production and associated seed quality assurance activities. All the activities are, however, guided by the philosophy of trying to promote the use of region-specific varieties combining high yield, good quality, curability and multi-disease resistance. Meanwhile, TMV resistant hybrids available to growers this season and the release of the new katambora/HRGI, grass variety (with up to 90 percent resistance to nematodes) should assist growers in overcoming disease and shortened rotation challenges. The Crop Protection Division has also made tremendous progress, and beginning this season, all TRB seed will be coated with an insecticide in addition to silver nitrate, the TRB statement said. Enditem