A 3-day national training workshop for Fiji agriculture extension officers and lead farmers was held to train them on open pollinated seed production processes for major fruit and vegetable crops in Fiji. This was to address an identified gap in farmers’ understanding of the processes of maintaining vegetable varieties and methods for extracting and storing seed in support of the Fijian Ministry of Agriculture’s extension services as part of their Fiji 2020 plan. The national workshop contributed to aspects of climate-smart agriculture and increasing the industry’s resilience and disaster preparedness. The workshop also addressed the importance of end-users in the value chain, particularly in ways to better service the Fijian tourism sector and ensure consistent supply of high quality produce.

Results & Findings:
The first three findings below demonstrated adoption of agricultural research in a very active and committed transfer to extension staff. These processes of knowledge transfer have to be managed, to ensure that information on new varieties gets to farmers promptly.
1. Participants learnt about the processes of plant selection, seed extraction and storage that enable new varieties of vegetables to be developed. They learnt about the importance of assessing how ‘true to type’ a crop is, and when it is necessary to return to seed suppliers for foundation seed, to ensure that crops remain true to type.
2. Participants learnt how to use the Pacific Pests & Diseases app on their mobile phone to be able to assist farmers with diagnosis and treatment of insects and pathogens.
3. Participants learnt about new approaches to cluster-training of farmers such as Participatory Guarantee System (PGS), and possibilities for development of a commercial seed production industry.
Two other findings were:
4. Participants learnt about problems in the supply chain that lead to sub-standard produce being delivered to hotels. Discussion of how to address this included new national policy initiatives (especially closer interaction with Ministry of Tourism) as well as regional initiatives, such as possibility of a regional forum or taskforce, and expansion of PGS or similar training clusters of farmers, to strengthen quality assurance processes along the value chain.
5. Participants developed their understanding of the national policy framework around agriculture, tourism and agri-tourism and the opportunity for them to use these frameworks to drive through improvements in the value chain to increase profitability for local farmers, reduce import substitution and facilitate the access of the hospitality industry to quality local produce.

@@

@@

@@

@@

@@

@@

@@

@@

@@

@@