One of the activity components of the “Farm – Promoting Urban Organic Waste for Food and Livelihood Security (FaPUOWaFLiS)” Project is the growing of pawpaw to help improve nutrition, as well as the economic well – being of households within the target communities.
The “FaPUOWaFLiS” project has six communities across the Tamale Metropolis, Sagnarigu and Savelugu Municipals as target beneficiaries, where a selected number of male and female farmers are being supported with various technologies on improved ways of farming value chain, especially in the cultivation of vegetables.
A total of six households in each community were given seeds of the pawpaw variety to nurse and plant in front of their households, as some of the seeds were also planted at the group farms where the vegetables are being cultivated.
Upon the monitoring team’s visit and subsequent assessment, it was found that some of the seeds germinated into plants, but had perished due partly to the low amount of water they were getting.
Also, the team found that none of the pawpaw at the farms of the communities survived the first season.
Other plants had also grown but had not borne fruits because they were male seeds that were planted.
The female seeds planted by some of the households however bore fruits which according to some of them, were the second batch of fruiting they were experiencing. Some of the households the team spoke to, indicated that they did not find any seeds in the fruits from the first harvest.
As the team went round, the communities which had plants with higher number of fruits on them included Libiga and Wovoguma.
The others with a few number of plants; between one and three, bearing fruits, are Datooyili, Duunyin and Manguli. None of the pawpaw plants in the Wovogu community survived, which according to the beneficiaries is partly due to the unavailability of water to water them.
The pawpaw variety bears fruits between thirty and one hundred and twenty, and is due for harvesting within six months.
The “Farm – Promoting Urban Organic Waste for Food and Livelihood Security (FaPUOWaFLiS)” is a two – year project and is funded by Bread for the World in Germany.
WUZDA Ghana 