by - A study recently received the Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2023 for his work identifying “forgotten” food crops in sub-Saharan Africa that may be more resilient to climate change than current staple crops Indian corn, rice. , cassava and yams.
- The study found that the greatest decline in suitability for current staple crops would be in West and Central Africa by 2070, with maize being the most vulnerable of the staples.
- In addition to identifying 52 food crops that are better suited to the region’s future climate — and that will have greater nutritional value than staple crops — these researchers have already succeeded in identifying some of the crops that are not hope to introduce them to local communities.
For many people across sub-Saharan Africa, Cleome giandra, called the spider plant, is not food: it is a weed. A tall leggy plant with stars of almond-shaped leaves and clusters of white flowers, the spider plant is particularly common in Southern and Eastern African countries. But until recently, it was a “forgotten” crop: sometimes eaten by rural people for sustenance, but largely neglected in larger food systems. This, though its peppery, mustard-flavored leaves and stems are rich in vitamins, minerals and nutrients – and may be more resilient than other staples in a region rapidly being transformed by change climate.
The spider plant is one of 52 crops identified in a 2023 study that was recently awarded the prestigious Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study examined “forgotten” crops that could help sub-Saharan food systems become more resilient, and more nutritious, as climate change makes it harder to grow maize, rice, cassava and yams. the region currently depends on them to grow.
“The changing environment, together with the need to diversify the food system and overcome some of our current health issues, should encourage us to change the way we grow things, the way we eat ,” says the co-author. Enoch Achigan-Dako, director of the Genetics, Biotechnology & Seed Sciences Laboratory at the University of Benin, Abomey-Calavi. “The diversity we need is already available.”
The researchers began by looking at the current and future bioclimatic ranges, including temperature, rainfall and soil type, of current staple crops. Using projected climate models for the year 2070, the co-authors identified several regions where these current staples are likely to become more difficult to grow in the next 50 years due to climate change.
Suitable ranges for these crops are likely to decrease the most in West Africa, decreasing by 17.7%, according to the study. The researchers predicted that the Central African staple would see a 14.5% drop in its ranges. Of all the main crops, maize was considered to be the most vulnerable to climate change. The study predicts that more than a quarter of its current growing locations in West Africa and a third of those locations in Central Africa will experience “novel” conditions, outside the baseline maize bioclimatic niche.
The researchers then compared these future scenarios with the environmental ranges of 138 candidate crops native to sub-Saharan Africa, found in gene banks and fields. According to the study, it was a food crop that was “under-researched, under-utilized, or under-promoted in the African context” but has the nutritional content and stability to support growing diets. healthy and local economies in the region.
“There have always been ‘forgotten’ crops in the continent’s food systems,” says Achigan-Dako. “But no one is promoting those crops, and no one is creating additional knowledge on top of the knowledge that farmers have already gathered on those resources.”
The researchers found that the current ranges of many of these plants suggested that they would be able to thrive under the expected new climate conditions. From this group, the researchers then refined their list to include crops with high nutrient content.
“If you look at larger patterns, not only in Africa but around the world, there is a tendency to homogenize diets, which affects not only our nutrition but the resilience of food production systems,” says co-author Maarten van Zonneveld, the gene bank manager at the World Vegetable Center in Taiwan. “But we know there is a nutrition gap around the world. We want to determine how much we can use these [plants] to get this double win, to address climate change but also to help provide people with access to healthier diets.”
For this team, the work is not only theoretical. This partnership came about in part because all the researchers were working on the ground in Africa, with growers and seed banks, to collect and study underutilized plant species, and to find the best strategies for diets introduce them to local
They’ve already had some success, including with the spider plant: the former is now a common sight at farmers’ markets in Kenya, and Achigan-Dako is working with farmers to sell it directly to consumers in Benin. His laboratory also succeeded in introducing the mung bean (Vigna radiata) into Benin by sharing seeds from the World Vegetable Center with farmers.
In Eswatini, van Zonneveld and the World Vegetable Center are working with schools to introduce hardy, underutilized vegetables into their gardens, which normally only grow beans and maize.
“These programs seem like a promising way to reach young people, provide them with more nutritious meals and let them experience these types of vegetables,” says van Zonneveld. “These are our future champions, and they will bring these vegetables. That’s really part of a long-term solution.”
The work is far from finished, however. One issue is that much remains to be learned about native crop diversity; van Zonneveld pointed out a significant knowledge gap in terms of historical crop records in the Congo Basin in particular.
“It’s one of the least researched areas on the continent in terms of vegetable diversity,” he says. This is partly because these countries are dependent on imports for their food. In many parts of the region, eating Western-style food is seen as a sign of wealth, and indigenous populations and cultures are still discriminated against. In addition, poor infrastructure and ongoing armed conflicts in some countries can make research difficult and expensive.
Furthermore, according to Josué Aruna, executive director of the Congo Basin Conservation Society (CBCS) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, most scientific interest in the region has focused on “improved” crops bred for yield and productivity, rather than nutrition or resilience.
“Communities have abandoned their cultural habits in terms of food systems, which has left them with less attention,” says Aruna. “Scientific researchers, by focusing on [improved] seeds, they have set aside the nutritional value, cultural values and economic values of ancestral seeds.”
However, the Congo Basin is not only among the most climate-vulnerable regions, but is an area of exceptional biodiversity, which may contain many other “forgotten” crops to help build resilience.
The change is starting. According to Famara Diédhiou, program officer at the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), supply chain disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine have caused many African countries to shift their focus from food security, which replaces access to food, to food sovereignty: “Not only access, but also diversification and the possibility of choice,” he says.
AFSA is working with a number of countries, including those in the Congo Basin, to implement the My Food is African campaign, which promotes indigenous and traditional food. They are also proposing a more local food policy and a greater focus on agro-ecology within the African Union.
Achigan-Dako, van Zonneveld and their colleagues are also providing information and seed resources to the US Department of State’s Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) program, which provides funding to improve the resilience and sustainability of global food systems . In fact, VACS used the crop list from the PNAS study to select its focus crop. The World Vegetable Center is also working on “rescue” missions to study native crops in Benin, Tanzania, Madagascar and Eswatini, four hotspots of vegetable biodiversity, with the goal of continuing to look for beneficial plants. .
“I think that’s an important message now, because if you don’t know what you have you can’t preserve it and you can’t use it,” says van Zonneveld.
The final piece of the puzzle is identifying the most effective ways to mainstream these crops. One aspect of this is working closely with farmers to determine which crops perform well in different areas. The other is to ensure that newly introduced foods taste good in local foods. The World Vegetable Center is working on this, using mobile kitchens in clinics, malls and supermarkets to test dishes with some of these once “forgotten” ingredients, including black nightshade, leafy amaranth, pumpkin leaves, okra, jute mala, and cowpea leaves. – all served, says van Zonneveld, “with peanut sauce: very important.”
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Banner Image: The WorldVeg team and the Ministry of Agriculture appreciate a better variety of okra in the nation of Eswatini. Photo courtesy of WorldVeg.
Citation:
van Zonneveld, M., Kindt, R., McCullin, S., Achigan-Dako, EG, N’Danikou, S., Hsieh, W., … Dawson, IK (2023). Neglected food crops in sub-Saharan Africa for healthy diets in a changing climate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(14) doi: 10.1073/pnas.2205794120
