Partnership Inception Workshop for the consortium on Control of angular leaf spot disease of citrus in Ghana

13-17 February, 2012, FARA, Accra. The workshop was organised with support from PAERPARD to facilitate a partnership among stakeholders in the citrus industry on the project ‘Control of Angular leaf spot of citrus in Ghana’.

The aim of this project is, to undertake a detailed nationwide survey on the incidence, severity and etiology of the disease in all the citrus growing regions. Disease management strategies (evaluation of some fungicides on the Ghanaian market to select some for control of the disease on already established fields and the study of natural incidence and severity of disease on established fields to select moderately resistant varieties to be considered for new plantations and augmented with the selected fungicides) will be developed with the involvement of farmers and training (farmer field school) will be organized for farmers and extension officers in the affected districts. Quarantine officers at the national borders will also be trained on diagnostic procedures for the identification of the disease.

The stakeholders who participated in the workshop included Scientists from the University of Ghana, Staff from Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Private Enterprises and Citrus Growers and Marketers Association, Input Dealers and an Europearn Research partner from the Valencia Institute of Agricultural Research in Spain. The workshop was facilitated by 2 external facilitators selected and trained by PAEPARD.

Objectives of the workshop included:

1. Familiarise participants with the concepts and processes of PAEPARD
2. To get to know each other better
3. To understand each other’s objectives and perspectives with well defined roles and activities to be carried out by each partner
4. To establish ground rules that will promote mutual understanding among partners
5. To improve the earlier concept notes that was submitted to PAEPARD
6. To develop a joint action plan