Biol. Schaedlingsbekämpfung - Afrika

• Research unit: SDC
• Project number: 7F-00600.10

Key words (French)

Agriculture, Recherche appliquée, réseau, Afrique de l'Ouest, niébé, IITA, systèmes de recherche nationaux, Protection intégrée, botanical insecticides

Short description (English)

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), in collaboration with various National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARES), emphasizes the deve-lopment of sustainable farming systems that optimise host plant resistance, botanical insecticides, cultural and biological control methods. However, up to the mid-1990s, most available technologies remained unadopted by many farmers. After wide consultations with the stakeholders, it appeared that a concerted effort focusing on a participatory ap-proach to assemble the technologies for farmer testing, validation and adaptation in a location specific manner would be required to improve the adoption chances for IPM technologies. Consequently, IITA, with financial assistance from the SDC, in 1994, in-itiated the pilot phase of a regional Integrated Pest Management (IPM) project "Protection Ecologiquement Durable du Niébé", PEDUNE.

Project aims (English)

· Test, on-farm, proven cowpea production and protection technologies.
· Develop with farmers, extension agents and NGO, 'best bet' options adapted to local conditions.
· Disseminate, through farmer field schools and other appropriate extension frame-works, and in collaboration with partner from national extension and NGO services, economically and environmentally sound technologies to farmers including resource poor farmers and women.
· Build and sustain technology development capacity in national institutions dealing with technology development and dissemination through training, workshops and ex-change visits.
· Assess the impact of disseminated cowpea technologies on food security, income, environment and public health through the use of input saving and environmentally friendly technologies.

Abstract (English)

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Transfer and application (English)

PEDUNE have focused on the development and testing of cowpea technologies on-station and on-farm. Among the technologies are field pest control technologies based on impro-ved varieties and plant extracts with insecticidal properties. Other important technologies developed include solar drying of harvested cowpea grains, and hermetic storage often coupled with the use of botanical insecticides. These technologies have been develo-ped/and or assembled by national scientists, extensionists and NGOs in each of the nine PEDUNE countries and are progressively being tested on-farm and disseminated to meet the demand of farmers, traders and food processors.