Cassava is a major staple food in Africa. The tuber is a valuable source of cheap calories, especially in those countries where hunger and malnutrition are widespread. In many parts of Africa, the leaves and tender shoots of the cassava plant are also eaten as vegetables.
Despite the importance of this tuber, it faces many problems, one of which is its low multiplication ratio. When a cassava stem cutting is planted, it will usually yield 10 mini stem cuttings 12 months later, giving it a multiplication ration of 1:10. In comparison, a maize plant can yield a cob with about 300 seeds – a multiplication ratio of 1:300. Rapid multiplication techniques can help overcome this low ratio.
The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is extending the benefits of its research on the rapid multiplication of the cassava stem in a training video that shows how a cassava plant can produce between 60 and 100 mini stem cuttings. Part 1 of this step-by-step guide is shown above, and part 2 can be seen here.
[...] problem. The best the CG seems to have been able to produce is a tweet and a blog post referring to a rapid multiplication technique which quoted an IITA video from 2009. Relevant, yes, but neither the tweet nor the post refers to [...]
Further to the post reproduced on FarmIQ (pingback above “the strange silence…”) the discussion continued directly on the Agricultural Biodiversity weblog.
See here
http://agro.biodiver.se/2011/11/the-strange-silence-of-the-cgiar-on-cbsd/
and here
http://agro.biodiver.se/2011/11/featured-who-knows-what-about-cassava-brown-streak-disease/