Soybean diseases: Unique situations in Africa

摘要

Soybean production occurs throughout Sub-Saharan Africa with Nigeria and SouthAfrica, respectively, leading production with 1.32 and 0.73 million tons based on datafrom 2017 (FAOSTAT, 2019). The total production of soybean in Africa in 2017 was3.13 million tons, which represents a 5.8-fold increase over the last 30 years comparedto a 3.8-fold increase for world production during the same time period. Still, soybeanproduction in Africa represents about 1% of the global production in 2017 (FAOSTAT,2019). Production of soybean in Africa could increase dramatically and the continentcould become a major world producer as more effort in recent years has focused onincreasing production through programs like the Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) whichhas partnered with International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and otheragencies to improve overall performance of ITTA breeding stocks, nationally releasedcultivars, and have introduced new germplasm from Brazil and the USA with the goalof developing new high-yielding cultivars. With this interest, diseases of soybean alsohave been a major concern since many of them are known to reduce yields and seedquality.