This article is an excerpt of New Vision article

As matooke takes lead as a staple food in Uganda and some parts of East Africa, banana farmers and those willing to take on the enterprise were trained on the best agronomical practices at the 2021 Virtual Harvest Money Expo.

Dr. Priver Namanya speaking at the training session of the virtual Harvest Money expo.

Dr. Priver Namanya Bwesigye, the NARO Banana Research Program leader gave tips on banana farming. She was hosted together with Washington Mugerwa, a banana farmer from Nakaseke as experts to take farmers through all stages of growing bananas as a business.

During the training session of the virtual Harvest Money expo, Dr Namanya said to manage a banana plantation well, Agro-climate, Soil requirements, and land preparation are key environmental facts that must be considered.

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The NARO banana agronomy team engaged Isingiro and Nakaseke district farmers in the importance of integrating use of manure and inorganic fertilizers (MOP + Urea) to improve their banana plantation and ensure productivity.

A NARO agronomist explaining to farmers how to effectively manage their plantations.

The Isingiro farmers’ field day held 11^th March 2021 attracted over 1000 farmers from wthin the district and neighboring districts. In Nakaseke district more than 400 banana farmers took part in the activity held at Kasaga parish.

According to Dr. Jerome Kubiriba, the Agronomy project leader, NARO, “aims at ensuring farmers achieve better bananas for health and wealth and sustainable banana productivity.”

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NARO Uganda has formed a private wing to oversee commercialisation of all its technologies. This was revealed by the NARO Director General, Dr Ambrose Agona, during a dialogue meeting with the private sector in Kampala.

NARO staff at the meeting held at NARL Kawanda

In the meeting, which aimed at discussing approaches NARO will use in an effort to commercialise its technologies, Dr. Agona confirmed that NARO scientists are teaming up with private sector companies which are already conducting business using some of the products developed at the various Institutes.

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The banana agronomy project team in partnership with about 70 scaling agents in both Uganda and Tanzania executed scaling activities using a jointly developed scaling strategy.

Participants at the Isingiro Farmers field day where importance of joining cooperatives was emphasized.

This strategy revolved around stakeholder mobilization, active engagement, showcasing and integrated monitoring, carefully tailored to ensure an effective scaling system.

Under this strategy, Farmer Cooperative Societies were formed to address issues of unstreamlined market linkages, formation of primary cooperative societies among participating farmers in Uganda.

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