STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 27 Trustworthy advising ... Use our knowledge to your benefit. With our outstanding experience in tea buying and blend development, we offer you high-quality teas, sophisticated formulations and latest tea innovations. Independently. Personally. Since 1992. Get an impression of us: www.kktee.de The new varieties are 200% better in performance than the existing varieties, and farmers should expect to harvest 3,700 kg per hectare every year by growing them, Musoli said. Most farmers now achieve annual yields ranging from 500 kg to 1,600 kg per hectare, according to UCDA figures. The new varieties grow a short bush with a smaller canopy than existing crops, yet they produce slightly bigger beans. They have been developed with cup quality in mind. EU support Development of these new arabica varieties began in 2019, when NACORI partnered with EU-EAC Market Access Program (MARKUP), a regional initiative aimed at improving market access to the European Union by five Eastern Africa countries that are member-states of the regional trading bloc, East Africa Community (EAC), including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. (Customers in the EU purchase more than 70% of Uganda's coffee exports.) With financing from the EU 11th European Development Fund, NACORI collected and analyzed data on coffee yields while observing incidents of coffee pests and diseases. Several candidate varieties were analyzed again before they were validated. Now they are ready for release to coffee growers, although NACORI and UCDA have not yet confirmed exactly when. Arabica varieties that have been planted in Uganda for many decades include SL 14, SL28, KP423 and KP162 — but SL28 and KP162 have proven to be vulnerable to leaf rust and coffee berry disease. Rollout Past experience with introduction of new robusta varietals, however, indicates that yields attained at coffee research stations are not always replicated at farms. "In a comparison made of average farm production, and the production on research stations, there is a wide gap between coffee production on the farm, currently estimated 1.4 tons/ha and the potential production of at least 2.5 tons/ha that has been recorded at the research stations," according to the UCDA's strategic plan. The disparity results from the long time it takes to propagate cuttings, grafts, and tissue culture. Slow dissemination of new planting material sometimes means that farmers miss out on one year in the crop cycle, delaying the increase in yields. Funding gaps Inadequate research funding is, according to UCDA, a major constraint in the development, roll-out, and adoption of dis- ease-resistant, high-yielding coffee varieties in Uganda. NACORI's coffee research programs are normally funded via an annual budget grant from the National Agricultural Re- search Organization, an agency of the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries. In addition, NACORI gets 10%

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