Top Zim scientist participates in COP26

Nqobile Tshili,Chronicle Reporter
AWARD winning Zimbabwean scientist Dr Prince Matova has said more sectors should contribute towards mitigating the effects of climate change as this does not always demand a high-level scientific approach.

Dr Matova was in September the recipient of the Young Scientist jointly awarded by the Plant Mutation Breeding Division of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations to scientists under 40 years of age.

A research and agronomy manager and maize and legumes breeder, he spent most of his career working at the Crop Breeding Institute in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement and while there, he released the first mutant variety of cowpeas in Zimbabwe, which is drought tolerant and has 10 percent seed size advantage over its parent seed, thus performing 20 percent better in terms of grain yield potential compared to most farmer varieties in Zimbabwe.

Now a research and agronomy manager and maize and legumes breeder of Mukushi Seeds, he participated in the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP26) conference after being invited by the IAEA.
Dr Matova said he was surprised to be invited as one of the guest speakers during the conference.

“I received an email inviting me to speak on climate adaptation at the conference and it came as a surprise to me. There were five other guests and in Africa I think the other person was from Mali. The COP26 was an important conference considering the number of countries and people who converged to tackle climate change related matters.

Climate change is real and the world needs to find ways of combating it. That is why the world converged to try and find solutions to it,” said Dr Matova.

“As Zimbabweans we need to continue finding ways of trying to adapt to situations under the influence of climate change. We are playing our part. Other sectors should also play their part in whatever way they can so that each of us can contribute to combating the effects of climate change.”

He said not all climate proof mitigation measures require a lot of money, hence he was invited to testify on how he had contributed to alleviating poverty through mutation breeding of plants.

“I was invited to share my experiences and part of the idea was to contribute towards drought tolerance in Zimbabwe. When we worked on cowpea, the idea was to develop seeds that are tolerant to heat stress. The techniques that we used is mutation breeding and in those cases I was trying to show that mutation breeding is a very easy tool unlike molecular breeding and these other sophisticated ways,” he said.

Dr Matova said some people may not understand the concept of climate change but are experiencing it almost on a daily basis.

“If you are to take someone a generation ahead of us by 20 to 30 years, they’ll tell you that in the early to late 80s there were a lot of rainfalls that they were receiving in their fields. And if we come to the 2000s and later years, we can agree that the seasons have become shorter and rainfalls have become less,” said Dr Matova.

“This is a challenge that we can all agree that our farmers are experiencing. Their crops can no longer sustain the seasons. If they are producing the normal long season crops, they will not fit into the crops. With our research, with our cowpea we are trying to breed varieties that can mature in less than three months. Within 85 days they can grow and harvest a crop.

We are trying to enhance the drought tolerance and even if the rainfall is about 200mm per season, they can get a good harvest from that crop.”

He said they were working to mitigate the effects of climate change in Zimbabwe.

“We are trying to mitigate the effects of climate change, the heat stresses, by coming up with innovations that can develop varieties that can adapt to those situations. This is across a lot of regions, not just Matabeleland South, and even if you go to Chikombedzi, Chiredzi, Muzarabani they are all areas that are very dry and those crops can fit very well in those regions,” said Dr Matova. — @nqotshili