Burkina Faso

In Burkina Faso, IITA works in partnership with the National Institute of Environment and Agricultural Research (INERA). One of its areas of focus is to fundamentally strengthen international plant breeding programs and most importantly, breeding programs of national partners in sub-Saharan Africa.

Some of the key areas of IITA’s work include developing profitable cowpea varieties with good agronomic traits, which are disseminated to small-scale farmers. The development of high value-added cowpea varieties, speeding up their dissemination with a seed production system enables IITA to produce preferred cowpea varieties. It also works on providing smallholder farmers in Burkina Faso with improved cultivars of four major grains: common bean, cowpea, chickpea, and groundnut.

IITA manufactures and facilitates distribution of the biocontrol product, Aflasafe, through the Aflasafe Technical Transfer and Commercialization project (ATTC).  Aflasafe is a field applied biocontrol product which reduces aflatoxin contamination in crops. There are continued efforts to encourage the distribution and use of the product on a commercial basis in the country.