On 7 November, IITA signed an agreement with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food in Gabon to provide Technical Assistance to the Graine Phase 1 Support Project (PAPG1). The ceremony was presided over by Ndoutoumou Charles Theodore, Cabinet Director of the Minister of Agriculture and Food, representing the minister.
IITA is expected to provide 5 million healthy cassava cuttings and 667 thousand plantain tissue culture plants to the Gabon government. In turn, they will multiply these seeds further through Société de Transformation Agricole et de Développement Rural (SOTRADER), a national structure promoting annual crops for further multiplication and distribution to the farmers by December 2023 reports www.iita.org/news-item
Capacity-building activities will be organized for field technicians, and scientific collaboration with IRAF scientists will be established to select and evaluate new cassava varieties, among others.