Boosting Plantain production

High-yielding plantain plantlets

5 Million Plantain suckers to be distributed in 2016
–Essimi Menye in Ekona
By Ajongakou Santos in Ekona
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will begin distributing 5 million plantain plantlets to farmers free of charge in different parts of the country as from April 2016. A workshop to train field staff on how to handle and grow the plantlets took place at Institute of Agricultural Research for Development, IRAD Ekona last Friday, May 29, 2015 under the chairmanship of Agriculture and Rural Development Minister, Lazare Essimi Menyi.
    The workshop according to experts was more than necessary because growing the plantlets to full-time plantains is a very meticulous and delicate exercise. Essimi Menyi expressed strong satisfaction with the level of work realized at the Institute of Agricultural Research for Development, IRAD Ekona for the mass production of Plantain nurseries adding that more farmers must be trained and introduced to farming methods that will help boost agricultural growth.

    Minister Essimi emphasised that the effect of distributing this 5 million plantain plantlets will be enormous given that enough plantain will hence be harvested, transformed into frozen plantain, chips, flour and other bi-products.
    “We are satisfied with what has been done so far because we are in a hurry to start producing these plantain plantlets. We gave some money to the institution and now I was able to notice by myself what has been done. I want to congratulate the whole team for the work done so far,” the MINADER said.
    The production of more plantain across the country, which is one of the ministry’s priorities, will in turn reduce the cost of plantains in the market thereby giving Cameroonians the latitude to choose from a list of food varieties including Irish Potato, Cocoyams, rice and others.
    For all these benefits to come-by, the minister insisted, it must start with training and that the success of the project lies in the hands of the trainers and IRAD.
    To the boss of IRAD-Ekona, Dr. Etchu Kingsley and the Director General of IRAD, Dr. Wenweh, there is nothing to worry about as everything has been put in place for the project to succeed.