African agriculture holds tremendous potential not only to achieve self-sufficiency, eradicate hunger, and ensure food security, but also to emerge as a significant player in global food markets. The sector can contribute substantially to national and global priorities such as poverty and hunger eradication, enhancing intra-African trade and investments, supplying inputs for industrial growth and economic diversification, promoting sustainable resource and environmental management, and generating employment and shared prosperity.

African agriculture faces several challenges, including limited access to quality planting materials, the prevalence of pests and diseases, and the significant impacts of climate change. These obstacles necessitate the provision of high-quality planting materials through advanced techniques such as tissue culture. By improving the availability and quality of planting materials, tissue culture can help mitigate these challenges, leading to more resilient and productive agricultural systems across the continent.

Tissue Culture Propagation

Tissue culture propagation is a method of plant reproduction where cells, tissues, or organs are grown in a controlled, sterile environment on a nutrient culture medium. This technique allows production of multiple plants from a small amount of plant material, ensuring uniformity and disease-free propagation.

Plant tissue culture has been around for more than 30 years and has been seen as an important technology for developing countries to produce disease-free, high quality planting material and the rapid production of many uniform plants.

Why Tissue Culture?

Many countries in Africa and beyond are striving for sustainability in the agricultural space as the effects of climate change become evident more than ever before. Some of the key benefits and reasons why tissue culture is important are:

1. Farmers can access pest and disease-resistant, climate-resistant crop varieties thereby contributing to food security and reducing the vulnerability of farmers, majority of whom are smallholders, to climate change.
2. By providing high-quality, disease-free planting materials, tissue culture can significantly increase crop yields, boosting food production and farmers’ incomes.
3. This technique significantly reduces the need for pesticides and optimizes water usage, addressing some of the critical sustainability concerns faced by African agriculture.
4. Plants produced through tissue culture are genetically identical to the parent plant, ensuring uniformity in crop characteristics such as growth rate, yield, and quality. This is key in commercial farming where the market requires consistent quantity and quality in a short time.
5. Availability of year-round planting materials which helps in farm production planning throughout the year to consumers and export markets.

Challenges Faced

Despite the promising outlook, challenges persist in tissue culture propagation. These include:

1. High initial cost of setting up tissue culture laboratories and facilities as well as operational costs such as maintaining sterile environments, tissue culture media are prohibitive.
2. Lack of an adequate number of well-trained and experienced tissue culture personnel which limits the effectiveness and scalability of tissue culture propagation.
3. TC plantlets are fragile and need to be hardened before planting and require appropriate agronomic management when they have been transplanted in the field.
4. Many farmers are unfamiliar with tissue culture techniques and their benefits, leading to low adoption rates.
5. Inadequate national and/or regional policy frameworks that support the production and distribution of tissue-cultured plants.
6. Cost of tissue-cultured plants can be high for smallholder farmers, limiting their ability to adopt the technology.

Addressing the above challenges requires a concerted effort from governments, research institutions, and the private sector to build capacity, improve infrastructure, and create an enabling environment for the widespread adoption of tissue culture technology in Africa.

Success stories in Africa

Potato Value Chain in Kenya

Scientists from the International Potato Center (CIP) introduced a technology called rooted apical cuttings to Kenya to enhance seed potato production. This innovation, developed in collaboration with Vietnamese researchers, addresses the low multiplication rates of seed potatoes by using tissue culture plantlets to produce over 100 rooted cuttings per plantlet, significantly boosting seed supply.

Since its introduction in 2016, the technology has been integrated into Kenya’s national potato certification protocol, with more than 265,000 cuttings sold in 2018. Farmers have seen increased earnings by adopting this method, which has the potential to double yields and improve the livelihoods of millions of households in East Africa.

Banana in Kenya

The implementation of tissue culture technology in Kenya has revolutionized banana farming, leading to significant success stories. One notable case is the establishment of community nurseries to facilitate the distribution of disease-free tissue culture banana plantlets to farmers. These nurseries receive in vitro plantlets, wean, and harden them before selling to local farmers. This approach has proven profitable, especially for farmers close to urban markets, who can sell their high-quality bananas at premium prices. The initiative not only improved banana yields but also enhanced farmers’ incomes and reduced dependency on banana imports. Over 500,000 farmers in Kenya have adopted this technology, demonstrating its substantial impact on local agriculture and livelihoods.

Banana and Coffee in Uganda

In the early 2000s, Ugandan coffee and banana farmers faced devastating losses due to bacterial wilt disease. One entrepreneur, Erostus Nsubuga responded by founding Agro-Genetic Technologies Ltd. (AGT Laboratories) in 2002 to produce disease-free planting materials using tissue culture techniques. The lab became the first commercial tissue culture operation in East and Central Africa, significantly boosting banana and coffee production.

With strong demand from government and NGOs, AGT scaled rapidly, now producing up to 10 million tissue culture plants annually and serving markets across Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and South Sudan. AGT’s efforts have led to a consistent supply of disease-free plants, job creation, and improved agronomic practices, cementing its role as a leading tissue culture lab in the region.

While not all stories have been captured, the above-mentioned ones illustrate the transformative potential of tissue culture propagation in African agriculture, demonstrating its ability to overcome key challenges and drive sustainable growth and development.

Conclusion

Although not a sole solution to the various challenges faced in African agriculture, tissue culture can be a significant component to improving the quality and productivity of crops.

Its potential to revolutionize food security, protect the environment, and offer profitable opportunities positions it as a beacon for those who are prepared to invest in Africa’s green future. Through strategic investments and partnerships, tissue culture can sow seeds of prosperity, resilience, and innovation across the continent’s agricultural terrain.

Agri Frontier recently supported an enterprise in Mali in becoming investor-ready and positioning itself to raise the necessary funding for the expansion of its tissue culture production. This business operates a tissue culture laboratory and hardening facility with a production capacity of 10 million in-vitro plants per annum. Recognizing a significant demand for high-quality planting material in Mali and across West Africa, the organization sought to expand and diversify its operations to meet this need.

Agri Frontier is ready and eager to support entrepreneurs and investors looking to venture into the tissue culture space. We bring extensive experience and expertise in this sector, and we welcome the opportunity to engage and discuss how we can collaborate to achieve your goals. Whether you are seeking to establish or expand tissue culture operations, we are here to provide the necessary guidance and support to help you succeed.

By George Kanyeki, Consultant Manager

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[1] Agriculture in Africa, available online: here

[2] Tissue Culture Technology, available online: here

[3] Plant Tissue Culture Key in Sustainable Agriculture, available online: here

[4] Catalyzing potato value chains in Kenya, available online: here

[5] Catalyzing potato value chains in Kenya, available online: here

[6] Banana tissue culture: community nurseries for African farmers, available online: here

[7] AGT Laboratories Limited Tissue Culture Story available online: here