Dry Season Cowpea Production Technology in Niger Republic

With more than half a million tons of dry cowpea grain produced annually, Niger Republic is the second largest world cowpea producing country after Nigeria. This is thanks to the dry season cowpea production technology introduced by the scientists at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Institut de la Recherche Agronomique du Niger (INRAN).

According to Dr. Hakeem Ajeigbe, Project Coordinator of the Gatsby-funded crop-livestock project, the short duration, high yielding and disease resistant dry season cowpea production technique was introduced to the farmers as an innovation in their cowpea/vegetable production systems. “This was aimed at facilitating seed production to be used by the project in the main wet season,” he said. Before now, farmers in the two villages used to plant vegetables under irrigation during October/November and harvest in January/February, leaving the land to fallow until the wet season. With the double yield of grains and fodder under the new production system, many resource-poor farmers have been trouping in to buy seeds of the new chickpea varieties.

The news article is available at http://www.iita.org/cms/details/news_feature_details.aspx?articleid=1072&zoneid=342.