Perpetua Murungweni
Chiponda community garden members have been urged to plant high breed crops because they are more disease resistant than the usual crops.
Speaking to farmers during a horticulture field day at Chiponda village under Chief Nyajena, ward 25 in Masvingo Central on May 23, 2023 Vengai Dhefu of Farm and City said farmers should plant high breed crops in order to reduce diseases in horticulture farming practices.
“I strongly urge you farmers to try high breed crops because they are more disease resistant since you are lamenting about water, and that lack of water for plants may cause different diseases,” said Dhefu.
He also urged farmers to practice early planting as a way of mitigating climate change effects.
“You should also try and practice early planting of your crops due to climate change and I also urge you to consider the weather conditions so that you can be guided on what to plant and at what time. Due to water supply challenges, you should also try to adapt to small grains such as wheat, sorghum and millet because they are drought tolerant crops,” said Dhefu.
Chiponda Agriculture Extension (Agritex) supervisor Tinashe Chirambadare promised to teach and mobilize garden farmers in adapting to high breed crops.
“High breed crops as mentioned by Farm and City have advantages especially in this project since we are having water challenges and our crops are being affected by different diseases. As the supervisor, I am going to mobilize farmers to adapt to high breed crops because they are not only disease resistant but they have a high yield,” said Chirambadare.
Kumbirai Chomunogwa the garden secretary said high breed crops are disease resistant and have high yields as witnessed on our sugar beans yield.
“High breed crops are disease resistant because we never had disease challenges with NUA 45 which is a high breed sugar bean crop that we planted this season and we also witnessed a high yield of the sugar beans,” said Chomunogwa.
Last year TellZim News had a partnership with Chiponda garden farmers where they distributed inputs among them vegetable and maize seeds a move welcome by the farmers.
