New Seed Initiative for Maize in Southern Africa (NSIMA)

Project description > Activities & Outputs > Project Impacts > NSIMA Workshop Papers

Project summary

	A rural stockist that does packaging and distribution of improved maize seed. The initiative is led by Crown Seeds, a new seed company operating amongst smallholder farmers in the Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces of South Africa

The New Seed Initiative for Maize in Africa (NSIMA) Project has the goal of stimulating the development and delivery of improved maize varieties to farmers in southern Africa. The basic underlying rationale of this Project is that most smallholder farmers are not using improved seeds, and consequently a fundamental constituent of productivity gain is missing. NSIMA is tackling this issue through a number of strategies, beginning with fostering the development of improved and adapted maize varieties through support of National Maize Breeding Programmes in seven SADC countries and funding the breeding activities of CIMMYT-Harare.

Several new maize breeding lines, open-pollinated varieties (OPVs) and hybrids have been released into the seed sector. In order to identify superior varieties, the Project has provided 336 regional variety trials to partner institutions in which 117 varieties are being tested in 2006/7 season. These trials are a means of identifying elite varieties which are then further tested in farmers’ fields using the Mother-Baby Trial system. This system is as a dependable means of determining farmer preference of varieties and serves as a reliable guide for variety release and distribution. A significant proportion of funds were allocated to NCUs for variety evaluation to strengthen dissemination and adoption of new varieties.

Many of the breeding materials and varieties developed by NSIMA are taken up by NARS and the private seed sector, and entered into the National Variety Registration Processes in respective countries. In 2006, a total of 98 maize varieties were released in SADC states with the majority released by the private seed sector in South Africa and other organizing releasing 30 varieties in six other states. Of the 13 releases of OPVs, 12 were derived from CIMMYT, while the two QPM hybrids released originated from CIMMYT. Tanseed International, a small seed company in Tanzania became the first indigenous seed company to register three maize varieties in the country during 2006.

The release process amongst SADC states is not presently harmonised, and thus any institution can register the same variety in multiple countries after meeting various requirements which tend to be costly and time-consuming. NSIMA supported the SADC Seed Security Network to formulate a SADC Seed System in order improve the dissemination of new varieties. The system has been endorsed by the Ministries of Agriculture of all SADC states.

NSIMA also supported several NARS production of Breeders’ and Foundation seed in order to improve supply by small seed companies and community based seed producers especially in rural areas. It also conducted training and technical back-stopping activities for NARS, NGOs, private seed producers and universities in order to produce and disseminate improved seed. These efforts were supported by those of the NCUs participating in the project through research, extension and seed production.