July 20, 2009

African Universities Tackle the Continent's Agricultural Crisis

African Universities Tackle the Continent's Agricultural Crisis 1

Vanessa Vick for the Chronicle

Anthony Pariyo (right), a Ph.D. student in a new plant-breeding program at Makerere U., in Uganda, talks with two farmers in the field. He is especially concernedabout the cassava plant, which, he says, "is getting knocked off by this new disease that no one understands."

By Megan Lindow

Kampala, Uganda

Anthony Pariyo stands in a field of cassava plants and holds up a withered tuber the size of a large fist, which he has crumbled in half.

"This is the cassava brown streak disease," he says, pointing out the large and moldy-looking brown spots that striate the starchy white flesh of the tuber, rendering it inedible.

"Our cassava is getting knocked off by this new disease that no one understands," he adds, holding the stunted tuber up for his classmates and colleagues to

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