Accra: Dr Amos Rutherford Azinu, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Legacy Crop Improvement Centre (LCIC), has highlighted the urgent need for Ghana to adopt Hyderabad's seed cluster model to enhance its food systems and empower millions of smallholder farmers.
According to Ghana News Agency, Dr Azinu emphasized that the challenge of global food security extends beyond merely producing seeds. It involves cultivating a systemic intelligence that can transform agriculture from subsistence into a strategic economic driver. He pointed out that Hyderabad's fields represent a vision of integration between biology and policy, where innovation fosters inclusion and a nation's commitment to agricultural excellence is evident.
Dr Azinu's participation in the India-Africa Seed Summit held in Hyderabad in September 2025 reshaped his understanding of agricultural transformation. The summit provided a platform for leaders and experts from various sectors to discuss innovative strategies to improve sustainable agriculture across Africa. This experience underscored the importance of collaboration and knowledge-sharing in addressing food security and enhancing agricultural resilience in Africa and India.
India has established itself as the world's fifth-largest seed economy as of 2025, a significant achievement for a country that once faced devastating famines. Hyderabad, the 'Seed Capital of India', plays a crucial role in this transformation, with the state of Telangana alone supplying over 60% of India's seed requirements. Dr Azinu explained that Hyderabad's success is not just due to geographical factors but the deliberate concentration of expertise, capital, and infrastructure, demonstrating the cluster effect in practice.
Hyderabad hosts over 400 seed companies and renowned research institutions, creating a dense ecosystem that fosters rapid translation of research breakthroughs into commercial products. This clustering strategy, Dr Azinu argued, offers a replicable model for Ghana and other African nations. Concentrating resources in strategically selected zones can exponentially accelerate agricultural transformation.
India's seed multiplication framework, which includes Breeder Seeds, Foundation Seeds, and Certified Seeds, ensures genetic purity and high yields. Trust is essential in the seed industry, and India's certification protocols and digitalized tracking systems provide farmers with access to verified, premium-quality seeds with complete traceability. This approach, Dr Azinu noted, is crucial for developing economies where counterfeit inputs are common.
India's seed industry thrives on strategic collaboration between government and private sectors. Government bodies like ICAR develop most seed varieties, while the private sector dominates production volumes, especially in high-value segments like vegetable seeds. This synergy was showcased at the India-Africa Seed Summit 2025, addressing global challenges such as climate-resilient crop development.
Dr Azinu highlighted AI-powered precision agriculture, blockchain traceability, and rapid seed viability testing as technologies that can enhance crop yields and transparency. India's seed sector is projected to reach $7 billion by 2030, reflecting its systemic strengths. For Ghana, Dr Azinu stressed the importance of establishing agricultural clusters, implementing rigorous quality assurance, fostering public-private partnerships, embracing digital agriculture, and designing inclusive systems to empower smallholder farmers.