The complete development of standardized operating procedures for regional germplasm exchange, standardized operating procedures for trial management and phenotyping, including digital data collection and integration in a database and environments for varietal testing and selection redefined by soil type, land use for yam, farmer types and climate will therefore be an essential preliminary condition to be fulfilled.

Through several years of yam research in West Africa, a broad set of constraints for delivering developed varieties for ware and seed yam production have been identified. Delivering a good variety will be easy if the clients participate in the development; however this is not the case in Ghana and Nigeria. Additionally, once the variety has been released, there is no operative strategy to disseminate and put it in farmers’ fields. That is why through this project, two key outputs are the harmonized yam breeding schemes, practices and procedures and the establishment of a breeding community of practices.

A lack of a formal seed system is also constraining the process despite the adaptation by ECOWAS of the Regulation c/reg.4/05/2008 on harmonization of the rules governing quality control, certification and marketing of plant seeds and seedlings in ECOWAS Region for eleven crops including yam. These problems are contributing enormously to low adoption rate of the developed and released varieties, constraining also yam productivity. Read More