b'WORLD STATUSFarmers in Afghanistan are growing high-yielding crops despite political unrest and investments are being made to help bolster agriculture in Nigeria.AFGHANISTAN DESPITE THE SEVERE social and politi-cal unrest that constrain agriculture in Afghanistan, many farmers are growing high-yielding, disease resist-ant varieties developed through international, science-based breeding and made available to farmers as part of partnerships with national wheat experts and seed producers.These and other findings have emerged from the first-ever large- of Afghanistan and the Internationalreference library. Of the 560 wheat scale use of DNA fingerprinting toMaize and Wheat Improvement Centersamples collected in four provinces assess Afghan farmers adoption of(CIMMYT) introduced, tested, andduring 2015-16, farmers misidentified improved wheat varieties, whichreleased improved wheat varieties. more than 40%, saying they were of are replacing less productive localAs part of our study, we estab- a different variety from that which varieties and landraces, accordinglished an extensive reference libraryour DNA analyses later identified. to a paper published in the scienceof released varieties, elite breeding(Source: CIMMYT)journal BMC Genomics. lines, and Afghan wheat landraces, The study is part of an activitysays Susanne Dreisigacker, wheatNIGERIAsupported between 2003 and 2018 bymolecular breeder at CIMMYT andA DOUBLE-DIGIT investment backed by the Australian Department of Foreignlead author of the new paper. a vibrant rural infrastructural network Affairs and Trade, through whichWe then compared wheat col- will help states in Nigeria to acceler-the Agricultural Research Institutelected on farmers fields with theate the transformation of agriculture, says Nteranya Sanginga, director general of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).No matter our good intentions, we cannot see a transformation in agriculture if we continue to invest less than 10% of our budget on agri-culture, says Sanginga.In 2003, African heads of state in Maputo made a commitment to invest at least 10% of their annual budgets in agriculture. However, 16 years after the dec-laration, only a few countries have implemented that declaration.On rural infrastructure, Sanginga said the government should pay close attention to rehabilitation of rural roads (feeder roads) to help the evacuation of agricultural products from the farm to the markets.He decried the deterioration of infrastructure in several farm settle-ments in Oyo state and urged the government to help reverse the trend. (Source: International Institute of Tropical Agriculture)60GERMINATION.CA NOVEMBER 2019'