Chief Nyambi hails ‘Peacock 10 ‘drought tolerant seed varieties
Amid calls of hunger striking many districts of the Southern and Eastern regions of the country, Masuku EPA in Mangochi in the area of Senior Chief Bwana Nyambi has witnessed firsthand the magic of drought tolerant seed varieties.
This is an intervention under the Malawi Improved Seed Systems and Technologies, MISST, a consortium of agricultural institutions propagating for the adoption of new technologies in the agriculture sector that would improve a farmer’s profit per acreage.
“The seed technologies that we are being shown in the demonstration fields by MISST are both eye opening and educative. We’ve seen how the various varieties have performed there and am particularly impressed with Peacock 10.
“This Peacock 10 is an equivalent of the local breeds we used to have back in the day, its poundable, the corn is sweat when eaten green and fresh, the cob is quite large and has more lines which gives a bigger yield on a small area,” explained Senior Chief Bwana Nyambi.
Nyambi was speaking on the sidelines of a field day organized by CIMMYT, a member of MISST, showcasing a demonstration field in the area.
“On the demonstration field, Peacock 10 outclassed other drought tolerant seed varieties in grain size, texture, cob size and number of cobs per stock, making it more yielding and likened to local breeds in many aspects,” said Bwana Nyambi.
According to Peacock Seeds Director of Production, Innocent Jumbe, “Peacock 10 has been the farmers’ preference in many areas in the country. We have three drought tolerant hybrid maize varieties in Peacock 10, CAP9001 and Peacock MH30 but the farmers’ preference is in this order.”
MISST Project Manager, Willie Kalumula explained that the project is a technology scaling project jointly implemented in 10 districts in the central and southern regions of Malawi by four CGIAR centers (CIMMYT, CIP, ICRISAT, and IITA) with financial support from USAID/Feed the Future. MISST includes components on scaling out seed systems and other production and utilization technologies for soybean, groundnut, pigeon pea, sorghum, millet, drought tolerant maize, and orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP).
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