Ruiru 11 Grafted on SL28 or SL34
Ruiru 11 Grafted on SL28 or SL34 Seedlings
Ruiru 11 Grafted on SL28 or SL34
Kenya old SL34, SL28 as well as KS7 varieties have been in the country since colonial days but CRI can now boast of new varieties Ruiru 11 and Batian that have restored confidence in Kenyan Coffee farmers after their release due to their being drought tolerant, improving production and also suitable for all growing altitudes in the Country.
Ruiru 11 Grafted on SL28 or SL34 Plantation
peaking to KNA at the CRI in Ruiru, Dr. Elijah Gichuru, the Institute Director noted specifically that the new varieties that is Batian and Ruiru 11 are also resistant to two main coffee diseases in Kenya, that is coffee berry disease and coffee leaf rust and therefore conversion of the new to the old would see farmers continue harvesting from some old stems even as they place the new ones to the point of bearing some berries.
“These new varieties that we have developed can be used to convert the old ones into the new varieties by grafting on top of the old stems as a process of changing of cycle,” he said.
Gichuru said that a farmer who already has the varieties in place, normally their first option would be to re-plant but this takes a lot of investment in terms of economy such as uprooting, buying the seedlings, digging new holes and also ensuring manure and much more making the plant take long to establish fully and thus making a farmer wait for almost three years for it to mature.
“Should a farmer have the old varieties that don’t have issues with the stems, it is still healthy, it is still ready for conversion for future and while converting to rejuvenate the plant, one will need to incorporate grafting so that the new generation of the canopies is no longer the old variety susceptible to diseases but a resistant plant which now saves you around 30 percent of the cost of production because it will not require spraying against diseases,”
