#Raw Materials

2019-01-16

The December 2018 ICAC Recorder continues its focus on yields in Africa

The December 2018 ICAC Recorder continued the theme established in the prior issue, which was released in September: ‘Cotton High Yields, This Time for Africa’. At 34 pages long, it includes four major feature articles, as well as an introductory editorial penned by the International Cotton Advisory Committee’s (ICAC) Head of the Technical Information Section, Dr. Keshav Kranthi.

The issue begins with Dr. Kranthi’s editorial, which previews the four features and promises that in the future, ICAC will ‘continue its technical efforts to explore tangible solutions to the intractable challenges in Africa and looks forward to collaborating with interested agencies for breaking the yield barriers and for the betterment of cotton farming systems and the entire cotton sector in Africa’.

The first feature article, entitled ‘Higher Cotton Productivity in Africa – A Socio Economic Analysis’, was written by two professionals with India’s Central Institute for Cotton Research (ICAR) in Coimbatore: M. Sabesh and A.H. Prakash. The authors point out that a small increase in cotton prices can more than compensate for lower yields, and that governments need to decide whether to focus on increasing cotton prices or yields.

The second feature is entitled, ‘Light and Simplified Cultivation (LSC) Techniques and their Relevance for Africa’. Authored by Hezhong Dong of the Cotton Research Centre at the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Science, it is an overview of LSC techniques designed to reduce the labour-intensiveness of cotton cultivation.

Article three — ‘Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Cotton Production in Africa’ — was written by Blaise Desouza at ICAR in Nagpur. He specifically addresses the need for growers to follow best management practices in Africa, particularly as they apply to soil health.

The final article was authored by Dr. Kranthi and takes a high-level view of the use of biotech cotton for both insect resistance and herbicide tolerance. It includes a country-by-country breakdown of which cotton-cultivating nations in Africa have approved one or both types of genetically modified cotton.

To view the December 2018 edition of The ICAC Recorder, please click one of the links below:

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Dr N Vigneshwaran is named 2026 ICAC Researcher of the Year

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DYNEEMA® and NP Aerospace advance personal protection for military servicewomen

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