Don urges establishment of Plant Biosecurity Diagnostic Network to tackle diseases

With the ever increasing yield of crops being lost annually to the activities of crop diseases and pests in Nigeria, a Professor of Agricultural and Environmental Microbiology, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State, Timothy Adejumo, has charged government to establish a plant biosecurity diagnostic network to combat such diseases as well as make Nigeria globally compliant.

Adejumo made the plea, while delivering the 9th Inaugural Lecture of the University titled: Microbes: Our Intimate Companions, Sometimes with deadly relationships He said: “Government should establish Plant Biosecurity Diagnostics Network with plant health diagnostics standards for high priority diseases and pests. This will allow rapid and accurate diagnosis of specific plant diseases and pests during incident responses, and help ensure that Nigeria meets its international plant protection obligations.”

He bemoaned the harmful nature of some micro-organisms, especially in animals and crop globally, which he said were the causes of a number of diseases, adding that multidisciplinary and multinational teams and funds are needed to support microbiology research programmes to effectively meet the global challenges and deliver solutions to our future food supply.
“There is a need to launch a nationwide effort to clean up harmful chemicals, prevent future accumulations, promote safe-handling techniques by working directly with farmers and strengthening the country’s institutional capacities to tackle the issue”, he said.

According to him, mycotoxins represent one of the most important and sensitive problems of life as many products being used in diet are exposed to contamination. He explained that there are hundreds of mycotoxins found in foods, while the most important ones are those that pose the greatest risks to human and animal health. He stated further that an average human has over 100 trillion microbes in and on his body, affirmed that humans are 90% microbial but only 10% human.

In a related development, a team of professors from Auburn University, United States of America have identified adoption of Agriculture as business, adopting global best practices, and genetically modified organisms and foods as ways out of the biting hunger ravaging developing nations.

Curtis Jolly, Williams Daniels, and Henry Fadamiro, said this solutions at a joint public lecture delivered at the Adekunle Ajasin University Lecture titled: ‘Global Food and Health Security’ held at the University’s Mandela Hall of the institution the experts revealed that reluctance of youths to take to agriculture is one of the causes of massive unemployment globally.
They said various aspects of farming are symbiotic and inter-related as maize, corn husks and grains could be developed into fish meals, while dried grasses and corn stalks could be broken down into animal feeds. According to them, genetically modified organisms and foods are healthy and are a veritable way out of the chronic shortages of food in most parts of the world.
While calling for re-orientation of farmers in Nigeria and other developing nations, the experts tasked government on the need for a comprehensive storage system to minimise what they called colossal wastage of food and food items in the country.

Earlier, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Igbekele Ajibefun, said agriculture remained an alternative way of boosting Nigeria’s oil-dependent economy and a cure for the unemployment ravaging the nation’s youths. He affirmed that the newly established Faculty of Agriculture of the University would change the negative orientation among youths towards farming.