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Staff of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research – Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (CSIR-SARI) have been educated on the activities and implementation plan of the Partnership for Agricultural Research, Education and Development (PAIRED) project.

The workshop was also to inform them of the importance of innovation platforms and how beneficial they were to the improvement of livelihoods of farmers.

PAIRED is a three-year project, which began this year in the Upper West, Upper East and Savannah Regions, being implemented by CSIR-SARI, based at Nyankpala, and CSIR-Crop Research Institute in Kumasi.

The project was developed by CORAF in West Africa after identifying the need for sustained agricultural growth, food and nutritional security, poverty reduction, organizational sustainability, effectiveness and efficiency and improved public and private sector investments and participation.

It aims to attain improved performance of agricultural input system in West Africa and the focus crops are maize, millet, sorghum and rice. Ghana will, however, focus on rice.

It is also to increase agricultural growth, food and nutritional security, reduce poverty in Central and West Africa, promote financial sustainability, accountability and strengthen the capacity of key stakeholders.

Dr Roger Kanton, Manager of the PAIRED project said the project sought to reposition "CORAF for organisational sustainability through a new identified pathway, build capacity that will deliver most efficiently and effectively through tools and innovation, increase public and private investments by engaging more actors and advocate policy reforms within the project's regions."

Dr Kanton said the project would also explore various approaches to innovation platforms such as technological innovation, institutional innovation, market innovation and policy innovation to realise its objectives.

He said the project would identify promising varieties of rice and produce seeds, facilitate the production of early generation seeds of rice, establish innovative partnerships to facilitate access to new genetic materials by the private sector, use seed fair, commercial promotion and market system development to stimulate demand, increase production and marketing of quality seeds.