Four Seasons of Learning and Engaging Smallholder Farmers - icrisat

Number of NARS scientists trained
Three staff in Malawi and one staff in Nigeria (all men) were trained how to emasculate and pollinate
soybean
Number of extension staff trained
From 2007 to 2010 a total of 167 extension staff (including development agents and NGO workers)
across the project countries were trained on soybean production, PVS, marketing, processing and
utilization. Of these, 32 were women (Table 11-28).
Table 11-28: Extension staff training on soybean production, PVS, marketing, processing and utilization in five
countries (2007/08 – 2009/10)
Country 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 Total
Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men
Malawi 12 3 12 14 3 38
Mozambique 17 44 12 23 29 67
Nigeria 30 0 30
Kenya 0 0
Tanzania 0 0
Total 17 56 3 12 12 67 32 135
Grand total: 167
Workshop on Rhizobium inoculum
The Soybean Rhizobium Inoculum Workshop was held on 17-21 March 2008, at Impala Hotel, Arusha,
Tanzania. The main output of the workshop was the production of a document entitled ‘Investment
Options for Adoption of Biological Nitrogen Fixation (BNF) in Soybean in Sub-Saharan Africa’. This
document has been submitted to B&MGF. This document led to the development of a bigger project
that included several legumes under the title “Putting Nitrogen Fixation to Work for Smallhoder Farmers
in Africa (N2Africa)”, which has started to be implemented since 2009.
Vision for Phase 2
Our vision for the second phase in relation to objective 7 is to increase soybean production by 15%
through increasing on-farm yields by 20% on 60% of the project target area. With respect to developing
improved soybean lines, we aim to evaluate 15 new lines for their drought tolerance and biological
nitrogen fixation, evaluate best Rhizobium strains in at least 20 best lines, evaluate at least 10 rust
resistant lines multilocation and on-farm PVS; select new breeding lines for drought and rust tolerance
from more than 30 segregating populations and establish homozygous lines for multilocation testing.
We also have the vision to release at least two varieties and produce 10-30 kg breeder’s seed every
year from each variety developed so far. In order to speed up our work, we will exchange soybean
germpalsm and inoculants with N2Africa project. Because much of the soybean produced by farmers
is for market, we will assess the protein and oil quality of existing and newly developed varieties and
lines. In terms of capacity building, we envision to train at least 15,000 farmers in soybean processing
and utilization, and establish at least four more soybean resource centers. We also aim to train five
postgraduate students at MSc level in plant breeding and 1,000 farmers, extension staff and technicians
in soybean production, PVS and soybean rust.
Progress of Phase 1
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