Ghana capable of producing large quantities of agricultural products

Accra, March 5, GNA - Ghana could benefit from large quantities of planting materials for commercial farmers and out-growers as well as export of agricultural products if she adopted "Tissue Culture Technology" as a method of producing food crops, Professor Sammy Sackey, Associate professor at the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Ghana said on Thursday.

Tissue Culture Technology is a process where the embryos of plants are put in an enabling environment to enable them to grow. Using this technology enables plants to grow faster in large quantities and plants are disease free.

Prof. Sackey made this known when the Parliamentary Select Committee on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs visited the Biochemistry Products Ghana Limited, a facility where tissue culture technology is used to produce food crops particularly plantain suckers for sale to farmers.

He said the project was started with the objective of developing innovations for enhanced agricultural productivity with a focus on plants like plantain, bananas, yam, cocoyam, cassava and pineapples. Prof. Sackey explained that, using the technology in agriculture helped in the rapid multiplying of plants in large numbers, crops were available all year round and were disease free. "With the technology we can produce about a million suckers in a year, we have been able to produce eight varieties of plantain, including onniaba," he said and added that it could also be applied in forestry, especially re-development of indigenous trees Prof. Sackey called for more support in terms of funding to enable the company to do further research and development.

The members of the Select Committee, led by Mr Paul Collins Appiah-Ofori, Member of Parliament for Asikuma Odoben Brakwa, expressed excitement about the project pointing out that such a project on a large scale could help solve the unemployment problem of the youth. "The project is a way to develop the rural communities by encouraging the youth into farming. It is an example of using science and technology for development." Mr Appiah Ofori noted that Ghana's competitive advantage was in agriculture and there was a need for various governments to take agricultural development seriously. "One problem we have as a country is that we import more than we export and we can only export agricultural products more," he said. He pledged the committee's full support for the project and said: "we will do everything humanly possible to help this project grow."