Agriculture
Improving Africa’s Neglected Food Crops
Officially launched at the Clinton Global Initiative meetings in 2011, the African Orphan Crops (AOC) consortium is an effort to improve the productivity of some of Africa’s most important food crops, while making them more nutritious and more robust in the face of weather disasters, pests and disease.
Working together, a collection of governmental and non-governmental bodies, scientific institutes and companies aim to improve the incomes of the 600 million Africans involved in farming, by providing them with surpluses to sell on the market.
Who are members of the consortium?
The consortium of partners is led by Mars, Incorporated, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and World Wildlife Fund. Working partners include:
- IBM (which is opening five technology centers in Africa)
- DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred
- World Agroforestry Centre
- Bioversity International
- African Academy of Sciences
- TransFarm Africa (at the Aspen Institute
- Plant Breeding Academy at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis)
What are Africa’s most important food crops?
The crops in question are grown in all parts of Africa, but are referred to as “orphan crops” because they have largely been ignored by science and big seed companies.
This includes, but is not limited to, crops like:
- Cassava
- Palm oil
- Peanuts
- Sorghum
- Millet
- Ethiopian mustard
- Groundnut tree
- Africa potato
- Winter-thorn acacia
- Baobab
- Bananas (matoke)
- African medlars
- African eggplant
- Cape tomato
Virtually every small farmer growing food crops for subsistence in Africa is growing a species that AOC will be striving to improve.
The consortium has already begun to sequence winter-thorn acacia, a tree that can be used for nitrogen fixation, carbon sequestration and erosion control. It has edible seeds, and unlike most trees, sheds its leaves in the rainy season, allowing it to be grown among field crops without shading them.
Why is improving yields of African crops important?
Per capita food yields have been declining in Africa for decades. As a result, more than one-third of African children suffer stunting (low height for weight), irreversible after age two, with lifetime debilitating neurological effects.
Underweight children are often prevalent in smallholder farming systems, representing 75% of Africa’s underweight children according to the Millennium Project's Task Force on Hunger.
The IPCC reports that by early as 2020, global warming may reduce rain-fed crop yields in some African countries by as much as 50%.This is a daunting statistic as 96% of African agriculture is rain-fed rather than irrigated.
To tackle these complex and pressing challenges, the best place to start improving productivity and nutrition is with crops Africans already use and know how to grow.
It is also likely that the biggest gains will be made in crops that have received the least attention to date from 21st Century plant breeding technologies.
As population and consumption in Africa increase and 21st century technology allows faster improvements of annual crops, tree crops and perennial crops propagated without seeds, demand for these crops is increasing.
The AOC is working to help Africa meet this demand.
“This work will not only help Africans feed themselves and their nations, it will help produce more food without expanding agriculture and in the process destroying precious natural ecosystems. By 2050, we will need to produce twice as much food as we do today. If we are to have any natural habitat left, we will need to freeze the footprint of agriculture.”
— Jason Clay, senior vice president of market transformation at World Wildlife Fund
How will the AOC help improve the productivity of these crops?
The consortium will genetically sequence two dozen genomes of neglected food crops that are important for food and income and have been chosen through work with African scientists from a shortlist of 96 species.
Early sequencing will be done by the Beijing Genomic Institute to focus research on these genomes and the markers found.
The goal is to sequence the 24 species by the end of 2014, depending on funding. The resulting genetic information will be put into the public domain the same way Mars, Incorporated released the cacao genome, through a web site that anyone can access. This will be managed by the intellectual property organization, Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture (PIPRA).
How will the consortium help get this information into the hands of farmers?
The consortium will establish the African Plant Breeding Academy on the campuses of the University of California, Davis, in Ghana and Kenya in 2012. This academy will train 250 plant breeding scientists and 500 technicians over five years. Equipment for both locations has been generously provided by the Life Technologies Corporation, a global bioprocess technology tools company.
The scientists and technicians trained through the African Plant Breeding Academy in Ghana and Kenya will, in turn, educate the next generation of African plant breeders and carry on the sequencing work for other crop varieties.
The goal of the African Plant Breeding Academy will be to educate African plant breeders in the application of genomic information to crop improvement, so that they can quickly adopt efficient, advanced breeding approaches. This will accelerate the rate of genetic improvement to increase yield and nutritional quality of African staple crops. By 2017, the hope is that Africans will take over all teaching and training.
The consortium plans to draw growing numbers of African biodiversity and agricultural centers and universities into the training and breeding effort, working with the NEPAD-implemented Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program. The academy will be established only after consultations with the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement in Ghana, the Centre for Crop Improvement in South Africa and the World Agroforestry Centre, which are also involved in the breeding of crop varieties.
“As this knowledge is used to develop improved varieties of these ‘orphan crops,’ African farmers will be able to grow highly nutritious, productive and robust crops for local consumption and create surpluses that can be marketed for income.”
— Howard-Yana Shapiro, global director for plant science and external research at Mars, Incorporated and an adjunct plant sciences professor at UC Davis
How will the crops be selected?
The shortlist of 96 species will be narrowed down on the basis of:
- Range of species occurrence and use in agriculture in Africa
- Current and prospective role in diets of African populations in general, particularly focusing on populations affected by food insecurity
- Degree to which a sequencing investment could improve food security directly or indirectly (yield is just one proxy for this)
- Species role in agricultural/forest ecosystems and socio-ecological systems
The role within ecosystems and socio-ecological systems will be determined through a variety of factors including the degree to which a species can be used in intensified multicrop systems; the number of crop cycles per annual cycle; energy requirements for cultivation, harvest and preparation; and the degree to which a species has multiple uses for human food, fodder and materials.
What political support does the consortium have?
“We now have African political support at the highest level.”
— Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki, CEO of NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency
Dr. Mayaki had earlier brought the concept before the African heads of state at the African Union Assembly, which endorsed the initiative.
How is the consortium funded?
The AOC, which has raised approximately $7.5 million, presented its plan at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in hopes of generating additional investments of some $32.5 million.
Who can I contact to get more information?
Please contact Martha Stevenson, senior program officer for research and development at World Wildlife Fund for more information.
