Kumasi (Ashanti Region) - Major Courage Quashigah (rtd), Minister of Food and Agriculture, on Monday appealed to the country's research scientists to move root and tuber crops from being mere subsistence to industrial crops that would bring in more export earnings.

This, he said, required developing new root and tuber crop varieties to meet specific uses. Major Quashigah was addressing the opening of a five-day Adaptive Research Review workshop of the Root and Tuber Improvement Programme (RTIP) in Kumasi.

It is designed to review and formulate new direction to improve research into the roots and tubers. The Minister gave assurance that the government would give support to their efforts in order to alleviate poverty and generate employment for the people.

He was unhappy that, "there is still a wide gap between the average achievable yield of most crops and the yield that is achievable under farmer's conditions".

Major Quashigah said, for example, the average yield of 11.3 tonnes per hectare for cassava was far below the achievable yield of 28 tonnes per hectare and that of yam could be increased from the current 11.7 tonnes per hectare to 23 tonnes per hectare.

He cautioned that research that fails to demonstrate the economic feasibility and viability of new technologies would always end up on the shelves.

The Minister said a number of entrepreneurs were ready to respond to the government's Golden Age of Business concept through agro-processing and therefore, asked them to ensure that their research provides information on the economic potentials of the new root and tuber technologies they had developed to facilitate adoption.

Mr Akwasi Adjei Adjekum, National programme Co-ordinator of the RTIP, said the programme has promoted three improved cassava varieties and mentioned them as 'Afisiafi, Abasafitaa and Tek bankye'.

He said, much awareness has been created among farmers on these improved varieties and as a result 41,815 resource-poor farmers in 50 districts have accessed the planting materials of those varieties.

This constitutes 75 percent of 56,012 farmers, who were targeted for the year. Mr Adjekum said four improved sweet potato varieties - faara, sauti, santom and pona - are being promoted under the programme.