Nigerian and Taiwanese organizations are exploring collaboration to improve Nigeria’s vegetable sector through Taiwanese technology and expertise in seed systems, protected cultivation, irrigation, digital farming and post-harvest management.
The discussions, held at the Taiwan-Nigeria VegConnect Forum in Lagos, focused on challenges facing tomato, pepper, onion and okra farmers, including poor access to quality seeds, crop-management difficulties and significant post-harvest losses.
Key areas identified for cooperation include:
- *Developing and distributing heat-, drought-, pest- and disease-tolerant vegetable varieties.
- *Strengthening links among breeders, seed companies, regulators, agrodealers and farmers.
- *Reducing tomato and other vegetable post-harvest losses through improved packaging, cooling, storage, drying and processing.
- *Expanding irrigation, greenhouses, screenhouses and other protected-cultivation technologies.
- *Using digital farming tools, sensors and automated irrigation to monitor crops and provide farmers with weather, pest, disease and market information.
- *Providing farmers with training in irrigation, crop protection, protected cultivation, food safety, post-harvest handling and agribusiness.
The proposed next steps include assessing Nigeria’s seed systems, testing post-harvest technologies, demonstrating protected cultivation, introducing digital farming services and providing technical training. Participants emphasized that technologies should be affordable, practical and tested under Nigerian conditions.