KICK OFF OF ACTIVITIES TOWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT AND INTRODUCTION OF A NASCODE SMART SEED LABELING AND VERIFICATION SYSTEMS FOR NIGERIA, HELD AT NASC HEADQUARTERS, SHEDA ON FRIDAY MAY 3, 2019.

In a bid to further enhance the seed sector in Nigeria and West Africa, a letter of intent between NASC and mPedigree, the technology giant behind the success of Goldkeys platform globally, was signed. This will mean that in the next few months, NASC will just like in the pharmaceutical industry introduce a turnkey electronic seed certification system with scratch card authentication and enhance security features that will make it impossible for the faking of any seed certified by the NASC.

The Goldkeys technology, will enable quality and genuineness verification by farmers and the public through SMS, smartphone apps (with GS1 barcoding support) and web. It is also equipped with its own integrated call center desk software. Farmers and the public can use any of the aforementioned channels to confirm within a few seconds if a tag on any seed purchased by them was genuinely issued by NASC or not.

The technology will give NASC complete control over every certification tag and batch of seeds right from its production and movement throughout the entire seeds value chain. This innovation is supported by AGRA and USAID/Nigeria.