Processors told a Tamale meeting that moisture and aflatoxin limit supply for groundnut processing, as CSIR-SARI pushes improved seed for farmers.
Processors cannot find enough Ghanaian groundnuts that meet buyers’ moisture and aflatoxin limits, Alhaji Fataw Alhassan of SM Ghana Limited told an industry meeting in Tamale. At the same meeting, researchers promoted new seed varieties.
He spoke at the eighth meeting of the Ghana Groundnut Working Group (GGWG). The meeting was held under the theme “Converting Scientific Efforts into Increased Productivity amongst Groundnut Farmers”. He said growing more groundnuts would not earn farmers more unless the crop was harvested, dried and stored well enough to meet processors’ specifications.
His concern has a long history. A study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) found that Ghanaian traders sort out shrivelled kernels, which are the most likely to carry aflatoxin, but do not throw them away. They are crushed and sold as cooking ingredients instead, and laboratory tests confirmed high contamination in products made with crushed groundnuts. The European Union’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed has flagged Ghanaian groundnuts and groundnut paste among rejected exports.
Research pushed towards farms
The working group was set up in 2019 and is led scientifically by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (CSIR-SARI) at Nyankpala. Dr Jerry Nboyine, a CSIR-SARI research scientist, said the group now includes farmers, processors, traders and policymakers, not just researchers.
In a speech read for him by research scientist Dr Richard Oteng-Frimpong, CSIR-SARI Director Dr Francis Kusi said the industry could not grow unless problems on farms and in processing and marketing were tackled together.
Researchers presented varieties bred to mature early, produce more oil and resist disease. They said the bottleneck is early-generation seed, the foundation stock that seed companies multiply. Without enough of it, they said, farmers cannot get improved varieties in useful quantities.
Students presented work on using drone images and machine learning to detect leaf diseases and pick out drought-tolerant lines. Other presentations covered post-harvest machinery, the role of women in the crop, its nutritional value, and techniques farmers have developed themselves.
A northern crop with room to grow
Groundnuts are concentrated in northern Ghana. In 2020, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) put the northern sector’s share of national production at 85 per cent. The ministry said at the time that more than 70 per cent of farmers there grew the crop, many of them women.
At the meeting, the ministry’s Statistics, Research and Information Directorate pointed to districts with production potential that is not yet being used. It did not publish a list.
Better seed only pays off if the harvested crop can be sold at the required grade. The Ghana Standards Authority has long promoted Aflasafe, a biological product that cuts aflatoxin in maize and groundnuts, together with good drying and storage. The Ghana Commodity Exchange has asked for state grain purchases to go through its grading system to protect against contamination.
Source:https://newsghana.com.gh
