Mr Onesmas Ssekito has been growing cassava in Mukono district, Central Uganda for close to five years now, he rips a lot of profit from cassava products that he sells including cassava flour, however, Onesmas has always had a problem, recently, his crops yellow off and yield fewer than before. He has tried all possible measures to improve the cassava in his garden in vain. His gross sales have fallen short from 500 tons he used to sell per month in 2016 to less than 230 tons of cassava tubers. This has made him lose his share of the market, his competition has beaten him out of the market and he is at the verge of giving up his cassava career to try out maize or sweet potatoes that are more promising.
We met Mr Onesmas a few weeks prior to the end of the semester to understand his situation and collect more information on how best we could help him. Like many farmers in and around Central Uganda, Mr Onesmas’ garden had been infected with a strain of the deadly cassava Mosaic Virus (CMD) spread by the cassava whitefly vector. His crops developed folded and cringed leave, and were failing to receive enough sunlight for photosynthesis to take place - as a result, the crops would later wilt and die. This is a very common sign of CMD.
Mr Onesmas is only one of the many cassava farmers in Uganda who are facing this same scourge of the mosaic Virus. We aim to help Mr Onesmas and many other farmers like him, who lack knowledge of the cassava diseases and how best to Control them.
MwogoNet shall have the ability to perform real time disease diagnosis and empower farmers like Onesmas with Knowlege on how to control the Virus.
