Tagline: Disease diagnosis, managment and quantification of productivity loss of Napier and other forages in East Africa
Champion: Alok Kumar
Team: Forage GeneBank, ILRI Ethiopia, Nairobi and some others
Forages are the key for better livestock production. So, the higher amount of forage production is very important for the farmers. If the productivity will be high then the cost of the forages in the market will be less and ultimately it affects the cost of production of livestock, which benefits the farmers as well as consumers. But unfortunately, a huge forage productivity loss is happening every year due to unknown diseases and we do not know even the actual causal agent. Also, nobody has studied about the extent of productivity loss due to these diseases. A very less work has been done in this area, especially in East Africa. It is expected that more number of viruses and phytoplasmas are available here, which affecting our forages, causing a huge productivity loss but still not diagnosed. So, there is a need of survey of the field across the country to find out the types of diseases and their causal agents, which helps in management of diseases and finally in reduction of the productivity loss. At the same time we can also estimate the amount of productivity loss due to these diseases.
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