NRCRI domesticates TRICOT to promote root, tuber crops

The Gender and Social Science Sub-Division of the RTB Breeding Project, National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI), Umudike, Abia State, has concluded the TRICOT inception workshop, under the 1000farms Catalytic Grant, to promote root and tuber crops in the country.

The 1000farms is an institutional platform of the CGIAR-National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARS) breeding network, aimed at increasing the network’s ability to produce on-farm data on late-stage selection candidates and new variety releases.

Participants were a team of 32 research Scientists drawn from NRCRI namely Dr Tessy Madu, Dr Samuel Onwuka and Bello Abolere, our Partners – International Institute for Topical Agriculture ( IITA) Ibadan and Sahel Consulting Agriculture and Nutrition Ltd represented by Dr Bela Teeken and Chinedu Agbara respectively, Women and

Children Development Initiative (WACDI) including Stakeholders from the Private Sector and TRICOT Lead Farmers.

The workshop held shortly after NRCRI’s Gender Division of the RTB Breeding Project won a 1000farms catalytic grant to pilot the mainstreaming of TRICOT in the release of its (NRCRI) other commodity crops – Yam, cassava, sweetpotato, ginger, among others.

The workshop was apt, as a follow up to the integration of the TRICOT approach as part of the protocol for variety release in Nigeria by the Variety Release Committee.

TRICOT, an acronym for Triadic Comparison of Technologies, is a citizen science research participatory strategy that involves farmers in the testing or validation of new crop varieties and other promising technologies, assisting them in determining, which technologes are best suited for dierent end-uses.

Adjudged a viable approach that will be more benecial and cani comfortably replace the on-farm variety testing, which is a compulsory component of the Variety Release Committee Standard of Operation (SoP), TRICOT approach also helps shorten the variety release cycle for the breeders, increase the scope of coverage of participants (farmers) in the evaluation trials, enhance the robustness of the data; such that due to its exibility, more varieties can be evaluated per time.

While a remarkable range of crops has been developed by advances in plant breeding, new crop types, however, might not meet farmer needs or the shifting climate in which they live and work if they are not tested in real-world environments before being employed.

This will guarantee that new varieties are high-performing in the hands of farmers, farmer-preferred, climate-adapted, and suitable for scaling up. Declaring the workshop open, the NRCRI Executive Director/CEO, Prof. Chiedozie Egesi, represented by the Principal Investigator of RTB Breeding Project in NRCRI, Dr Joseph Onyeka, emphasised the importance of the TRICOT workshop/meeting to NRCRI and all the stakeholders in the variety release chain in Nigeria focusing on the great potentials of the approach as a replacement to the on-farm crops evaluation trial.

He lauded the Gender and Social Science Sub-Division for winning the 1000farms Catalytic grant, emphasising that this would help to support research exploits in NRCRI.

Head of NRCRI Gender and Survey Division of RTB project, Dr Tessy Madu, said the Tricot inception workshop was aimed at bringing stakeholders together to plan on mainstreaming Tricot in the commodity crops establishment of the on farm variety release evaluation trials for 2024.