WOMEN in Nasarawa have been trained on capacity building and empowerment programme of Federal Government on value addition of tomatoes and other related perishable fruits.

Dr Olutola Oyedele, Director of Research and Project 7 Coordinator of the National Horticultural Research Institute Ibadan, who disclosed this in Lafia, said the women who drowned from the southern senatorial zone of the state, were trained for value addition to on tomatoes produce.

According to her, the Institute in its finding has discovered that tomatoes are naturally important to every household but has a very short live Spam, hence came up with technology that would benefit the producers to improve quality and market value by properly manage and drying to have an age long preservation to avoid post-harvest losses.

“We are because sometimes last year we were here to look at the various challenges and constraints at the strength, weaknesses and threat we have in value-added chain.

“At the end of our survey, the area of intervention which was identified I think they issue on tomatoes,

“But today, why we are here, is to do a capacity building and empowerment on tomatoes processors to be able to take care of the fruit when they harvest it and to be able to preserve and sell them when the season is over and they make money.

“It is also an avenue to reduce post-harvest losses that is usually part of the harvest we always faced in this country.

“Low-cost tomatoes sun dryer is introduced to the women to dry tomatoes, after selecting, the rotten ones away, and then thorough washing before cutting them into pieces thereby spread to on the dry locally machine.

The director said that ten (10) groups of women coming from various villages and communities for the training would be going home each with one of the low-cost dryer and other items.

“They are also encouraged to go home and extend same training to other women so that we can have a good preserve dry tomatoes free from microbial contamination as well as to gain economic value and make more money from the product.

“The three days training is FG event which begins today with Lafia zone, would also continue tomorrow with Akwaga zone and to conclude with Benue State by Thursday, she said.

She further stressed that the program is an establishment of a platform of onions, tomatoes, plantain, banana and African bush mango. These stakeholders are expected to meet and add value to these perishable items.

A nutritionist and secretary, state committee on food and Nutrition Amina Ahmed described the program as a laudable initiative taken by the FG because tomatoes are very essential to the human body.

“It has vitamin A. And we want our women to learn so much on this commodity so that it would use to their family and their children in particular.

“I am calling on the women to take this training seriously so that they teach other on how to preserve tomatoes in a clean and hygienic way, she added.

Mrs Comfort Edom, the nutritional focal person in ADP and subject matter specialist in Agroforestry said the program is timely in the sense that very soon the ripe short tomatoes and vegetable would be harvested.

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“But the problem we have at the rural areas is the way of processing it. When you move around the town you would see there are places where they used the bear floor to dry it, which is unhygienic.

“So, ADP has a great work to do and the facilitator of this program have done justice to it, but the awareness must be taken to women in rural areas, ” she added.

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