development
projects
location Kenya date 2009 – 2011 project team Noah Phiri Duncan Chacha Daniel Karanja
bulking kale seeds in Kenya
Vegetables are grown by over 90% of Kenyan smallholders. The most important is kale, a Brassica oleracea cultivar. A total of 320,000 tonnes of Kale are produced each year from over 23,000 hectares of land. Kale forms part of every meal in most Kenyan households. In fact it is nicknamed ‘sukuma wiki’ which means that it is a meal that ‘helps see you through the week.’ Kale is rich in a range of nutrients including iron, calcium, vitamin C, vitamin K and carotenoids. It is grown for home consumption but is also sold in towns and cities, providing opportunities for farmers to generate income.
so what’s the problem? Farmers prefer to grow varieties that are productive, late-flowering and resistant to bacterial black rot, as well as having large, dark-green leaves that are attractive to buyers. Common commercial varieties do not have these characteristics, and in some areas, farmers grow their own varieties, which are in high demand by other farmers. Unfortunately, at prime locations the different kale varieties are so mixed that it is almost impossible to get good quality seed from them.
KNOWLEDGE FOR LIFE
what is this project doing? The objective of this project was therefore to “clean-up” the local breeds into separate varieties and develop a model for producing good quality seed of the new variety/varieties (selected under a previous project) specifically we are aiming to bulk up seed of CABI 1 and CABI 4 (which were recommended, by the National Varietal Release Committee, for registration after development and testing processes) in preparation for official release, as well as initiate the registration and release processes for three more kale seeds (CABI 2, CABI 3, CABI 5) and promote sustainable seed production technologies.
results so far In a previous DFID-funded phase of the project, CABI and partners ‘cleaned up’ Kinale kale selections from gardens of 24 farmers into five varieties coded CABI 1–5. Seed bulking was carried out in purpose built screen houses to prevent contamination from other varieties. Intra-varietal pollination was facilitated by introducing honey bees in screen houses. In May 2010, CABI 1 and CABI 4 were authorized as varieties and officially released (named Kinale and Tosha, respectively). These were the first locally developed varieties of kale to appear in the national list of varieties released in Kenya. The other lines require further cleaning/selection before being licenced. Meanwhile, the project is providing large quantities of starter (basic seed) that could be used by a farmer-led seed enterprise to produce and market the improved kale seed. The bulked seed of CABI 1 and CABI 4 (Kinali and Tosha) were made available when the Minister of Agriculture officially released the two new kale varieties at the National Seed Policy launch. This current innovation provides an opportunity for turning indigenous technical knowledge, embodied in registered seed varieties, into a widely available technology which brings benefit as a seed enterprise that satisfies the need and demand for the type of kale that farmers want to grow.
www.cabi.org/kale partners KEPHIS, KARI and Lagrotech, Kenya sponsors Funded by the CABI Innovation Fund
contact CABI, ICRAF Complex, United Nations Avenue, Gigiri, PO Box 633-00621, Nairobi, Kenya T: +254 20 72 24450 F: +254 20 71 22150 E: africa@cabi.org www.cabi.org/africa
ID-KALE-01-13
Noah Phiri, Project Manager