SILK FARMING

Clet Masiga is the executive director of the Tropical Institute of Development Innovations (TRIDI). He plans and directs the running of the National Sericulture Resources Research and Development Centre, an agency that promotes silk growing in Uganda.

Clet Masiga on his 15-acre farm of mulberry. (Photo by Christopher Bendana)

TRIDI has branches across the country, but its headquarters are at Namasumbi in Mukono district near Kyabakadde. Here, there is a 15-acre farm of mulberry and a huge modern complex building is being planned to host the factory.

Masiga says he has 63 permanent professional staff, with an annual investment of sh10b. TRIDI is the world institute that influences individuals, communities, ministries and governments in the tropics to access and use science, technology and innovations in exploration, production, processing, and manufacturing.

The non-profit international institute is headquartered in Uganda, but aims at application and advancement in science and technology excellence internationally. Its main projects are aimed at improving livelihoods across East Africa and boosting Uganda’s sericulture industry from subsistence to commercial production.

Sericulture is the process of cultivating silkworms and extracting silk from them.

Silk farming in a facility on the farm. (Credit: Christopher Bendana)

Who is Masiga?

For Masiga, science is for societal challenges and a profitable business. He has used his scientific knowledge to improve his livelihood, while bettering society. While at university, Masiga wrote an advanced level biology pamphlet of fundamental concepts, model questions and answers for secondary school students.

His interest in agriculture stems from family roots.

A native of the Elgon mountains, he grew up working in the coffee and banana shambas. His interest was augmented by his father, who was an agricultural extension worker, promoting better farming skills in coffee and banana farming systems. But it was the forestry officers who worked in the Elgon area, with their double-cabin pickups, that interested Masiga in forestry. His dream alternated between medicine, agriculture and forestry during his O’level.

At A’level, he was zeroing on to agriculture and forestry. Finally, at university, forestry won.

After university, Masiga worked as an extension officer for the ONFARMEAT project under the Winrock International Institute for Agricultural Development. He was also in charge of the woodlot establishment.

At the same time, Masiga worked as a consultant on farmer institutions to enhance uptake of technologies for Sasakawa Global 2000 in crop production demonstrations, on-farm post-harvest demonstrations, agro-processing enterprise development, input dealer development, private seed enterprise development, draft power and farmers’ association development.

His interest in research started when he was appointed agroforestry dissemination officer at the Forestry Resources Research Institute, an affiliate of the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO), nearly fulfilling his dream to develop and pilot the implementation of an action plan for agroforestry research and dissemination of research outputs.

Masiga has used his scientific knowledge to improve his livelihood, while bettering society. (Credit: Christopher Bendana)

New life

Then something else happened. Masiga’s interest changed to genetics and breeding. He recognised that Uganda needed skills in genetics and breeding in several bioscience fields.

“There was need to understand the genetic diversity of life systems to breed new plants and animals for the benefit of humanity,” he says.

Consequently, Masiga funded himself to study a genetics master’s degree at Birmingham University in the UK.

“I decided to join the University of Birmingham because it had the best geneticists that had been mentored by pioneers in modern quantities genetics. The genetics field was virgin and it had few professionals,” he says.

His lecturers included Prof. Michael Kearsey and Harpal Pooni, who had been mentored by Prof. Mather and Jinks. The two are the co-authors of Introduction to Quantitative Genetics. Their mentors, Mather and Jinks, were the authors of the first book in genetics titled Biometrical Genetics.

Indeed, when he joined the University of Birmingham, both Kearsey and Pooni were his supervisors. He even planned to work at the famous Millennium Seed Project of the Royal Botanical Garden at Wakehurst Place in the UK, but he later realised that his skills were much needed at home than in a developed country.

Masiga worked in the research laboratory on drought and models for understanding quality seed stored in gene banks. During his time at Millennium Seed Bank, he was involved in determining biological markers for quality and stress resistance. This is part of a project on developing plant diagnostic tools and modelling to predict quality for the conservation and breeding of plants.

Masiga was using molecular, physiological and morphological traits to determine markers for evaluating crops using 19 accessions of Arabidopsis Thaliana.

Mulberry growing on the expansive farm. (Credit: Christopher Bendana)

Back home

From the UK, Masiga worked at NARO in the National Crop Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI). He also worked at the Uganda Christian University in the faculty of science and technology, as well as the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa.

He says working at these organisations helped him see the gaps in the agricultural value chain — poor seed and lack of gronomy among farmers.

He had done seed multiplication earlier in his career as a part-time engagement under his private company, Agriculture and Rural Development Advisory Services Limited. Masiga implemented several contracts on rice, bananas, goats, piggery, poultry, legumes and maize.

He was also contracted to produce and process vegetable seeds for seed companies.

Masiga says he decided to study genetics because he wanted to breed new tomato varieties suitable for the Ugandan market. Because everyone eats a tomato, he would make a lot of money, he thought.

However, the influence of Norman Orlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, compelled him to think more about serving humanity.

“While visiting fields in Busia [eastern Uganda], I told him about my private company for agricultural advisory and the potential to make money in his country. What he told me changed my thinking” says Masiga.

Borlaug told Masiga not to think much about money, but more about what he can do for the world.

“It might be more rewarding if you did something which benefits more people in society rather than making money that benefits yourself. This oriented my belief to advocate for technology that can benefit many people.”

This is how he started advocating for genetically modified organisms for their benefits to society.

Masiga says when he left ASERECA, he thought of what to do with his knowledge gained from a masters in genetics and PhD in genetics and modern biotechnology. He looked at the four main productive areas in agriculture (food, feed, fibre and fuel), which were untapped.

After careful analysis of the technical capacities and the untapped opportunities, Masiga zeroed in on fibre and fuel, saying food and feed had relatively more people in it.

There was already a crisis. Uganda, which was a leading cotton producer in the 1970s, was now a leading importer.

Silk farming

Work in progress on the silk farm in Sheema. (Credit: Christopher Bendana)

Masiga had already gathered a lot of information about silk and had done a global study on the available technologies and innovations in silk. What was missing was feasibility in Uganda. So, he decided to focus on a baseline study in Sheema district, western Uganda.

“What I found in Sheema further motivated me to regard silk as the white gold that can develop Uganda.

“I found out that farmers with one acre of silk cocoons would earn sh6m annually. If they improved it into yarn, this would double to sh12m and sh25m if they turned it into silk. This is compared to an income of sh3m-sh5m for coffee and banana farmers. A farmer can harvest 1,000kg cocoons from an acre, which translates into 130kg of yarn,” he said.

With that, Masiga went to various organisations promoting silk growing.

He projects foreign exchange of over sh5trillion ($1.37b) from silk and associated businesses annually.

The facility in Sheema district where silkworm rearing is taking place. (Credit: Christopher Bendana)

Dr. Peter Ndemere is the former executive secretary of the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology, who supported Masiga’s project during its infancy to access funding from the Innovation Fund. He says Masiga helped fill the research gaps in the silk value chain with his study in Sheema district.

“While silk growing was limited in Sheema, Masiga is spreading it countrywide. He is passionate and knowledgeable about it,” says Ndemere.

Way forward

Masiga says they are currently evaluating four breeding lines of silkworm and 12 Mulberry lines at 11 locations in Sheema, Mubende, Mukono, Bukedea and Pallisa.

Others are Kayunga, Bulambuli, Zombo, Kamuli, Buikwe and Gomba.

“This study will help us increase the fibre length from the current 1000m from a single cocoon to 1,300m,” he says.

“The feasibility study confirmed that the entire country is suitable for sericulture. If we can implement the project in the initial 50 districts and on the targeted 50,000 acres, we shall create 300,000 jobs across the sericulture value chain.

Masiga says this will push 300,000 people into middle-income status and improve their livelihood.

A building to house the factory is already in place at Namasumbi in Mukono district.