Tag: SeedAssure

Seeds go digital

Written by Jérôme Bossuet on January 17, 2019. Posted in News.

Seed Assure app testing in the field in Kiboko, Kenya. Photo credit: CIMMYT. — *Seed Assure app testing in the field in Kiboko, Kenya. (Photo: CIMMYT)*

Many Kenyan maize farmers are busy preparing their seed stock for the next planting season. Sowing high quality seeds of stress-tolerant varieties is a cost-effective way for African smallholder farmers to boost their harvests while being resilient to evolving crop pests and diseases as well as an erratic climate. However, even if a majority of farmers buy their seeds, they are often of dubious quality or of old, outdated varieties, which do not cope well against increasing drought and heat shocks or emerging diseases.

Insufficient seed quality control

The African seed sector has long been plagued by counterfeit seeds and a complex and costly certification process, which hampers access to better, higher-yielding, wide-ranging varieties for farmers.

Since the 1990s, national agencies could not keep up with the seed trade growth to handle the certification processes. Backlogs of certification requests and erroneous seed checks make it costly for private seed companies to produce and commercialize new varieties. As a result, maize varieties grown by farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are old: 28 years old on average for hybrids and up to 40 years old for open-pollinated varieties.

“A lot of the national certification systems in the region are overwhelmed. They do not have enough seed inspectors with proper training and tools to carry out compliance checks effectively and in a timely manner. The licensing, labeling and branding protocols and regulations are equally not in full force, and much of the work still needs to be digitized. This slows the entire process,” said Kate Fehlenberg, Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa Seed Scaling (DTMASS) Project Manager at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), at a recent Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) seed policies’ harmonization event in Nairobi.

Go digital

To solve this certification bottleneck, seed actors are looking at digital solutions for faster, more accurate seed quality checks for both seed producers and regulators. One Kenyan company, Cellsoft Ltd., has developed SeedAssure, a cloud-based platform that enables digital seed inspections. Data necessary for quality seed production, pest and disease surveillance, and the required checks to apply for a commercial license can be shared in real-time on a common platform that links seed companies, inspectors and local authorities. Such a tool not only enables optimal quality in seed production, but expedites the licensing, certification and trade processes with traceable data records.

SeedAssure is rapidly being rolled out across eastern and southern Africa with support across the seed value chain. This includes regional trade bodies like COMESA and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), national regulators such as the Seed Control and Certification Institute (SCCI), to research and development organizations like CIMMYT and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). So far, 15 seed companies in seven countries in the region have been testing SeedAssure.

Transboundary data-sharing to boost regional seed trade

Kinyua Madhan from Zamseed and Nicolai NASECO testing SeedAssure on smartphone in the field in Kiboko, Kenya. Photo credit: CIMMYT. — *Visitors test SeedAssure on a smartphone during a field visit in Kiboko, Kenya. (Photo: CIMMYT)*

To boost regional seed trade, all actors along the seed value chain and across the region must embrace this digital revolution and “speak the same language”. This means adopting the same rules to identify and register a new variety, and using a common platform to easily share data between countries.

Currently, despite efforts to harmonize seed trade policies across the region, such as the COMESA Seed Harmonization Implementation Program (COMSHIP), passed in 2014, most countries still use different protocols to name and register seed varieties. One variety could have a different name in each country it is sold in. Data used for quality control are still often on paper rather than online, with each country performing its own tests. Seed companies must apply for new variety registration, with new data for each country they operate in. This all costs them time and money.

Adopting a unique identifier for seed products and digitalization can help alleviate this harmonization issue, easing comparable data sharing across border. Since November 2017, CIMMYT has adopted a Variety Identification Number (VIN) system. It is like a unique barcode for each variety which contains information about the organization that produced the variety, the year of release, the crop and specific traits such as drought-tolerance, the country where it is produced, etc. SADC and COMESA have just adopted this VIN system. COMSHIP is setting digital seed variety catalogues using the VIN, and soon regional seed labels. It will facilitate cross-border seed trade and help track seed fraud.

The 2019 Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA) held this week in Berlin is debating how digitalization is transforming the farming sector. This is particularly relevant for the African seed sector as digital innovations could make seed certification and quality control cheaper, faster and more transparent, while narrowing the space for fake seed. Seed companies would then be encouraged to release more new improved varieties, and ultimately accelerate our research impact for African farmers.

In your seeds I trust: African seed companies test the SeedAssure application

Written by Jérôme Bossuet on October 11, 2018. Posted in Features.

NAIROBI (Kenya) — More than 20 representatives of eastern and southern African seed companies and regulatory agencies recently took part in the demonstration of a new seed certification application that can help get quality seed to market more quickly and curb sales of counterfeit seed.

As part of an event organized by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Program (CIMMYT) at the Kiboko research station of the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) on September 17, 2018, participants field-tested a beta version of SeedAssure, a digital platform that gives automatic feedback on compliance and seed production management, along with remedy options.

SeedAssure was developed by Cellsoft, a supply chain management software company, with input from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the Qualibasic Seed Company, the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS) and CIMMYT.

“This is very useful for companies like ours, spread as we are over different countries, to manage at a distance our seed growers,” said Andy Watt of QualiBasic Seed Company, who has been testing SeedAssure on the company’s farms. “The application’s dashboard will point out which farms to visit quickly for corrections.”

Mobile innovations enhance quality and speed

For over a decade, the region’s seed sector has sought fast, cost-effective and transparent seed quality control and certification approaches for use across the value chain and the region. Seed companies often rely on under-staffed national certification agencies that may miss critical inspections or give inaccurate reports. Registration of new varieties can take many years, discouraging investment in improved seed and impeding regional trade.

Worse, by some estimates as much as 40 percent of the seed sold in eastern and southern Africa is falsely labelled or not what farmers are told they are buying. KEPHIS recently confiscated over 13 tons of “fake” seeds.

The seed sector has sought mobile innovations such as tablet-based field inspections whose data load to centralized, cloud-based dashboards.

With SeedAssure’s “traffic light” system, field inspection results for factors such as plant population will score green (complied – good quality), amber (needs improvement) or red (reject) and be readily visible to key actors in the seed certification and supply chain, according to David Laurence-Brown, SeedAssure co-developer.

“This quality assurance system can help seed companies get licenses faster, speeding product to market and greatly reducing the financial risk of getting new varieties to farmers,” said Laurence-Brown. “The vision is that all actors have access to timely and accurate data on products, licensing and trade movements, with quality control checks along the value chain.”

He said that SeedAssure features 260 critical questions in 13 seed production checklists. “Putting the right questions in the right order is crucial to determine how sustainable your seed production is,” Laurence-Brown explained.

*Partners test the SeedAssure app on a tablet during a field visit in Kiboko, Kenya. (Photo: Jerome Bossuet/CIMMYT)*

Fixing the bugs

Participants emphasized that national and regional regulatory bodies needed to be on board.

“Advocacy has to be done at different levels, from COMESA, national plant protection organizations, big and small seed companies, and research institutes and donors,” said Kinyua Mbijjewe, a well-known figure in the African seed industry and co-creator of SeedAssure, adding that this has been underway for a year now with a positive response, and public engagement is now ramping up with partners like AGRA and USAID.

Participants also suggested simplifying SeedAssure by reducing the number of questions and the subjectivity of certain data fields. For example, they observed that a more objective method was needed for scoring pest infestations, rather than SeedAssure’s current approach of rating infestations as low, moderate or intense via visual estimation.

“This will not be adopted if it’s too complex,” said Nicolai Rodeyns, NASECO seed company, Uganda.

Developers are addressing these issues, as well as comments that the application should not mix compliance and seed production management features.

CIMMYT announced that it would offer members of the International Maize Improvement Consortium (IMIC) a one-year trial subscription to SeedAssure.

Finally, AFSTA, AGRA, CIMMYT, COMESA, USAID, and other partners are forming a SeedAssure Alliance to support testing and rollout with companies and public organizations in eastern and southern Africa.