What officials said at Naro event

What you need to know:

Aflatoxin has been a big problem for particularly grain-eating areas in Uganda.

Frank Tumwebaze, Minister of Agriculture: “Dr [Yona] Baguma as a policy maker, what do you advise us? Farmers may not know about this technology (Aflasafe]. What policy can we develop? Can we say every certified seed multiplier should stock this technology? If government capitalised this institution, it can produce the animal feeds in the different institutions in the country and it could also help farmers in the country to buy affordable and quality animal feeds. Going forward, animals have to be fed, but how do you balance between farmers struggling with animals and small pieces of land? Just like you buy rice and you eat, farmers must make animal feeds. If Naro is fully-funded, they are able to commercialise their products and in five to 10 years, [the] government may not be required to put its money here. If the initial investment is substantial everything here can make money. They can even generate their own electricity and sell to the national grid. They need to scale, brand and market if we are to support it initially.
In Egypt, the research organisation is able to feed east Egypt and the Middle East with fish exports. They run aqua culture parks. The role of the research has now changed to accommodate the needs of the changing time.This is a government public good institution. If it is to sell products like seeds, pesticides, biogas, anti—tick vaccines and Alfasafe. They should be subsidized. They have solutions of pesticides, biogas and they are producing vaccines for anti-ticks and Aflasafe.”

Matia Kasaija, Finance minister: “Thank you for doing this wonderful job. You can be sure government will help you keep going. We are proud of you, the scientists. Do not go and sleep. Continue studying until death asks you to go away. Technology is coming, discoveries are coming. Personally, I would want to wean NARO off government funding. I want them to become a big industry so that they can compete withanyone in the market. Right now they need some little more money.”

Dr Godfrey Asea, director National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI): “Aflatoxin has been a big problem for particularly grain-eating areas. And I am talking about maize, and I am talking about groundnuts and I am talking about sorghum. And the problem starts in the field where the fungus resides and comes with the material exacerbated by poor post-harvest handling and high moisture content and makes the levels to increase beyond the recommended levels. The World Health Organisation’s [maximum aflatoxin concentration threshold] recommendation is ten parts per billion.
But our monitoring has showed that we even have samples that are 100 parts per billion. So, those samples are beyond the required level. And aflatoxin has a problem of linkage to causing cancer. It affects the liver and it is also exacerbated by problems of hepatitis which[also] affects the liver. So, it is a big health burden to the country. It also affects grain quality in terms of regional market penetration because of poor quality standards, if the standards are high. It can cause rejects and it has happened. And also acute levels can cause death. People have died from died from eating contaminated grain. Remember the case in Amudat District about four or five years ago! It was caused by high levels of aflatoxins in maize meals. And that is where the problem is and the studies we have been doing to be able to address that problem using competitive exclusion method, which is almost like biological control; identifying the good fungi which can control the bad fungus so that it can displace it and exclude it from the same feeding area. This is the principle behind the product we have called Aflasafe that we have developed, that we are taking now to be registered so that it can go to farmers.
… We identified fourteen strains of the fungus. We have the good fungus and the bad fungus. They outcompete each other using the principle of competitive exclusion where the good fungus outcompetes the fungus from the place where they eat. We got eleven good fungi and formulated theminto two good products. One is a Uganda specific product because the fungus is not found in Kenya or Rwanda. We called it UG01. The other one has the samestrain in Kenya and we said in future as a region this could become a regional idea that can be commercialised and we called it KEG01.
This is the fourth season we have been testing in National Agricultural Research Organisation (Naro) farms and farmer fields and I am more than happy to report that the level of aflatoxin control has almost gone to 96 percent on the grains. We apply it in the garden just before the maize flowers; ten kilogrammes per hectare. The same happened to sorghum. This protects itfrom the bad fungus. Very soon we shall be discussing the data, registration of this product and get into mass production. It has linkages from the grain side, the feeds side and when added to the maize, the fungus can be used for feeds.’’