The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH has trained Agricultural Extension Agents (AEAs) on how to improve the productivity using a technique named “Topworking”.
The 2-day training, which was organised by the Resilience Against Climate Change (EU REACH) project aimed at teaching AEAs from the Upper West, Savannah and Northern regions how to improve the productivity of unproductive and over-aged cashew plantations which is known as topworking.
The training seeked to expand the capacities of the AEAs in line with the government’s Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD) programme. A broader goal of the training is to expand agroforestry, focusing on cashew production in the northwest zone of Ghana.
The programme, funded by the European Union (EU), provided a platform for fourteen AEAs to build and improve their capacities and knowledge levels on the new technique introduced to them.
Out of the fourteen AEAs, eleven came from all districts of the Upper West Region, one AEA each from Sawla-Tuna-Kalba and North Gonja both in the Savannah Region, and one from Mamprugu Moagduri in the North East Region. Of which all fourteen benefitted from both the theoretical and practical sessions of the training workshop.
The Upper West Regional Director of the Department of Agriculture, Emmanuel Sasu Yeboah in his opening address at the workshop noted that there are other factors that affect cashew cultivation and not only the environment.
“…it is not necessarily the environment that is not conducive for cashew cultivation, we must use science and technology to make the cultivation of cashew work properly in the North Western part of the country”.
He holds that should the AEAs apply the knowledge acquired from the workshop, cashew production in the northern part of the country will be boosted.
“I will urge our participants to apply the technical knowledge they will be acquiring from this workshop to make cashew very productive in this region. The region is not badly placed when it comes to the conditions for cashew production, if we apply all the knowledge we receive, within no time cashew production in the REACH operational areas and the region at large will boom.”
The training was held in two phases: Phase One had participants going through criteria for selecting unproductive trees, cutting of selected trees or stumping, painting of the cut surface, covering the stump with leaves and branches to facilitate the initiation of new shoots and the removal of cover and monitoring of shoot development. Phase two will be held in October and will have participants observe shoot development and subsequently graft unto successful shoots identified using the usual cashew grafting procedure or protocol.
The principle of topworking is the replacement of the crown of an underperforming tree, by joining scions with desirable characteristics from ‘elite mother trees’ on them, with the purpose of improving the productivity of the tree by taking advantage of its well-developed root system.
Top working ultimately provides such advantages as rapid growth, a quick return on investment as production can start the same year, and improvement of yields of trees.
