Category: Neglected species

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A valuable round up on watchamacallits (NUS, orphan crops, development opportunity crops etc etc)

On the Agricultures website our friends Stefano Padulosi and Paul Bordoni have just published a very valuable round-up on what they call “underutilized species”. ((Facebookers can contribute to the discussion of what to call those things here.)) Valuable especially because it returns to the topic after six more years of research in the field, casting a historical eye over what worked and pointing out that these species — whatever you call them — can offer poor people a diversity of options to improve their lives, provided projects accept that it is complex and needs to be thorough.

The end-result … was very positive … and further confirmed that it is indeed possible to turn underutilized species into an effective instrument of development and improvement of peoples’ livelihood. This work did also demonstrate that the successful promotion of underutilized species needs to be solidly anchored in cultural-sensitive objectives that are fundamental in the sustainability of this work.

There is a lot more useful information in the article and the references it cites for anyone planning to work on underutilized species. That alone makes it worthwhile. More than that, though, it shows the value of returning to a topic after a little while, sharing the lessons learned, and bringing together in one place the many fascinating new activities, operational and planned.

I hope the African orphan crops project will be able to do something similar in six years time?

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Survey on African orphan crops

Danny posted the following recently on the “Biodiversity for Food and Nutrition” Yahoo Group. I couldn’t find it anywhere else online, so he may have got it by email, I’m not sure. He did ask for it to be more widely disseminated, so here goes. We have mentioned the African Orphan Crop Consortium here before, mainly, if memory serves, to question whether sequencing the genome of said crops was necessarily the best way to spend $40 million. But then we would, wouldn’t we.

“The African Orphan Crop (AOC) consortium had a successful launch at the Clinton Global Initiative in September and the Beijing Genomic Institute has already started work on sequencing winter-thorn acacia (Faidherbia albida). ((Faidherbia albida is still included in the survey to gather more information on the crop.)) After gathering wonderful feedback from our meeting this summer, we are now conducting a survey to guide the next steps of the project. Via the survey, you are invited to contribute your knowledge and opinions to inform the selection process for the first 20-25 crops that the consortium will genetically sequence. We deeply appreciate your willingness to share insights with this project and would encourage you to forward the survey to others in your network who might like to participate.

The results of this survey will be used by the consortium to inform a process for prioritizing which crops will be initially selected for genetic sequencing, assembly, and annotation by the consortium. As discussed this summer, once this information is developed, it will be placed into the public domain, and plant breeding programs will be established to support development of these crops including the training of 750 plant scientists in Africa. Ultimately, we would like to sequence all of the appropriate crops on this list, and we believe that the momentum generated by the first set of sequenced crops will attract additional interest and funding.

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A Green Revolution for trees

Prof Roger Leakey, sometime of ICRAF (among other places), where he pioneered tree domestication in support of rural livelihoods, and now Vice Chairman of the International Tree Foundation, has a fascinating new book in the offing.

In contrast to the doom and gloom often emanating from the tropics, ‘Living with the Trees of Life’ illustrates how many different aspects of agricultural science can be combined into a more robust approach to farming, which will be productive, as well as more environmentally and socially sustainable. This approach uses agroforestry as a delivery mechanism for multifunctional agriculture aimed at addressing the cycle of land degradation and social deprivation in the tropics. A key role in this is played by the ‘Trees of Life’, the large number of indigenous trees that produce marketable fruits, nuts, medicines and other products of day-to-day importance in the lives of local people throughout the tropics.

The book promises to be very practical.

A 3-step approach is described which can be used to close the Yield Gap (the difference between the yield potential of food crops and the yields actually achieved by farmers). This pays special attention to land husbandry and to the wise use of the natural resources which support agriculture and the livelihoods of poor farmers. By closing the Yield Gap agroforestry builds on the advances of the Green Revolution.

Builds on those advances while avoiding its pitfalls, and indeed rectifying its more regrettable consequences, one assumes.

Finally, all this comes together in a set of five ‘Convenient Truths’ which highlight that we have most of the knowledge and skills we need. This is illustrated by the Equator Prize winning project ‘Food for Progress’, in Cameroon, a project which has also been recognized by UK Government’s Office for Science as an African Success Story.

I had a little trouble identifying this project, but I believe I finally found it, and very interesting it sounds too.

Look out for the book in July, from CABI.

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