Call for more research into soyabean production

technological advancement to boost both smallholder and commercial soyabean production.
In an interview, chairman of the board Professor Sheunesu Mupepereki said it was critical to promote more research interventions in areas like harvesting, variety adoption and marketing.
“Harvesting is a major challenge to most smallholder growers who do not have combine harvesters especially when they want to expand their hectarages.
“There is need for alternative harvesting equipment or even thrashers that can either be animal or tractor-drawn,” Prof Mupepereki said.
He said manual harvesting of the crop was difficult as the process was tedious and took a lot of time.
Prof Mupepereki added that there was need for research in the adoption of short season varieties that could do in most parts of the country, including the dry areas under region 4 and 5.
Soyabean is an important crop both for humans and livestock. This makes it vital to come up with appropriate research methods on managing stocks that incidentally have lots of nitrogen vital for soil fertility enhancement and stock feeding as well.
“We need to do more research on commercial soyabean varieties and avoid those that shatter on ripening. Shattering is a major problem before harvesting and has caused severe losses to many producers,” said Prof Mupepereki.
He said it was crucial to do market research along the value chain – starting with markets for inputs to markets for the output.
Prof Mupepereki also emphasised the need to promote high levels of information dissemination within the soyabean industry saying that would help both growers and service providers.
“It may be necessary to have a technical co-ordinating committee to co-ordinate the whole exercise and get to all stakeholders,” he commented.
Last year the country harvested 37 000 tonnes of soya, a figure that stakeholders hope to increase to 43 000 tonnes this year.
In Zimbabwe soyabeans contribute 30 percent of all the cooking oil production while cottonseed contributes 50 percent.