West African food composition data by variety

Good news from FAO:

West African Food Composition Table / Table de composition des aliments d’Afrique de l’Ouest is available on the INFOODS website (http://www.fao.org/infoods/tables_africa_en.stm and http://www.fao.org/infoods/tables_africa_fr.stm) as PDF and Excel file. It includes 472 foods and 28 components.

Particularly good because data is provided for different, named varieties, for at least some crops. Here’s a screengrab of part of some of the entries for pearl millet, just to give you an idea:

And yes, in case you were wondering, those ikmv and ikmp numbers refer to genebank accessions, as it happens mainly at ICRISAT and USDA. Just insert “ikmp” in the little box at the top right hand corner of Genesys, for example.

Now, who’s going to send these data to USDA and ICRISAT for them to include in their databases? Wait a minute… Why is everybody looking at me?

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