The Director of the Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria, Prof. Ibrahim Umar-Abubakar has said that the institute would constitute a committee to build and strengthen research-industry synergy to boost Nigeria’s agricultural production.

He disclosed this at the sidelines of Research Extension Farmers Input Linkage System (REFILS), which is part of the 2018 Annual Agricultural Research Review and Planning Meeting organised by IAR, Samaru, Zaria in Kaduna State.

Abubakar said the committee became imperative in view of the fact that it would bring the industries closer to researchers for solving societal and national challenges.

“I intend to start the advocacy by constituting a committee that will reach out to industries to show them the need for funding research for the development of agriculture in this country,” he said.

The director advised farmers in Nigeria to take advantage of technologies developed by the institute directed at smallholder farmers for enhanced yield and to boost revenue base.

“These technologies range from crop varieties to agronomic practices to crop protection measures to the way we should manage ourselves to the way crops are grown in the field and also development of simple machineries that will aid production and reduce drudgery. The smallholder farmer, which is targeted should avail himself or herself with these opportunities to be able to access these technologies because we are here for them.

“The institute had been serving these small scale farmers for decades and we proudly saying that 70 per cent of any technology that is now within the reach of the smallholder farmer come from this institute,” he assured.

While saying that small scale farmer was the most beneficiary of the IAR’s research outputs, Abubakar assured that modern technologies were critical to rapid agricultural yields.

He appealed to the Federal Government to ensure adequate budgetary provision for research institutes in the country and ensure timely release of funds to effectively discharge their mandates.

“Research has to be planned properly, for example budget has to be passed at the right time so that research funding will come to the research institutes at the right time for them to carry out researches. Last year, we got our first allocation of funding agricultural research from budget in September; you can imagine how we can plan our research with this kind of staggered release of fund.

“The funding usually come late and is not adequate, so I am appealing to government to adequately and timely fund research so that we can make effective utilisation of the resources for the betterment of research in this country,” he said.

On extension, the director said the essence of REFILS right from inception was to build and consolidate on linkages between research and farmers.

He said that explained the reasons why most of the programme managers of Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs) and their directors of extension and technical services were in attendance.

“They are here to take note of what is being said in this workshop and eventually break it into extension points for farmers for the village extension agents to take it to the farmer.

“I think we are in the right direction, if the ADPs can be serious to do what they expected to do but as you are all aware, the major problem with ADPs is funding.

“They may take home so many things from this workshop but may not have the capacity and ability to transmit the information down to the farmers.

“So, government should actually fund the ADPs to function effectively, so that this line of communication will not be broken,” the director explained.