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Our Correspondent
Forex trading
The Executive Director of the National Institute of Horticultural Research, Dr. Ademola Idowu, who gave the hint in Ibadan on Wednesday, said Nigeria would earn good foreign exchange when the pact between the research institute and the Bells University of Technology, Ota, on spice research and development begins to yield results.
Idowu, who stated this in an interview with our correspondent, said NIHORT signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Bellstech in November 2008 to collaborate on research findings.
He said NIHORT had earlier invited an expert in horticulture from the University of Agricultural Science in Bangalore, India, Prof. Mariappa Vasundhara, for a lecture, where it was revealed that Nigeria could make fortunes from spice development.
Idowu said that findings by a group of researchers from the institute, which was also confirmed by Vasundhara, showed that Nigeria was blessed with more fertile land than India, earns foreign exchange estimated at $2.5bn annually from spice export to over 150 countries.
He added that India was currently growing and processing about 50 different varieties of spices both for domestic consumption and export. He noted that Nigeria could surpass the record.
Idowu said research findings by experts in Nigeria had also established the fact that the country has enough fertile land that could accommodate more than 50 species of the spices.
He said his agency and Bellstech have enough human resources and facilities at their disposal to carry out scientific findings that would lead to commercial production, processing and utilisation of spices in the country.
Idowu described spices as an important group of agricultural commodities which, since antiquity, have been considered indispensable in the culinary arts for flavouring foods.
He said, ”Some are used in the pharmaceuticals, perfumery, cosmetics as colourant, preservatives, antioxidant, antiseptic and antibiotics. They play a significant role in the national economy of countries like India, Indonesia, Germany and Netherlands”
He lamented that despite the importance of spices and their potentials in the development of the nation‘s economy, the crops have remained untapped in Nigeria.
He said, ”Different agro-ecological zones in the country are rich repositories of different species of spice plants.”
He said the two institutions had pledged to work together as a team and devise a strategy that would make the research findings open to investors.
He also said they had promised to assemble a team, apart from the researchers, that will discuss with the industrialists.
He said that the college of biological sciences, chemical sciences, biotechnology and food technology, will serve as platform for the linkage.
The Vice chancellor of Bellstech, Prof. Isaac Adeyemi, had, while signing the MOU, noted that the team in his university‘s College of Food Sciences had both academic background and industrial experience to handle processing and utilization of spices together with seasoned researchers at NIHORT.
”It is my belief that jointly we can blaze the trail in this unexplored area with full economic potentials not only for individuals but also for the nation,” he stated.
Vasundhara had in her paper, stated that despite the limited land space in India for the cultivation of spice crops, the country is still supplying over 70 percent of the global demand annually to Europe, America, Asian and many African Countries.
She said the world was currently looking forward to Nigeria to take its lead from leading producers of the product because the global market for the organic food hit about $31bn in 2005.
She urged the nation‘s leadership to encourage researchers at NIHORT to adopt best practices that would make massive production of various species of spices possible in the country.
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