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Promoting early-maturing, oil-rich shea trees and holding off the charcoal threat

n Abia, Northern Uganda, farmer and grandmother Catherine Ekuka, 63, decants shea oil for cooking. Photo CWatson/ICRAF
n Abia, Northern Uganda, farmer and grandmother Catherine Ekuka, 63, decants shea oil for cooking. Photo CWatson/ICRAF

In Europe and the US, shea butter or oil is a famous skin cream. But shea is even more important as the main cooking oil for the band of 21 African countries that stretches West to East from Senegal to Ethiopia. There the oil is valued and relied upon by an estimated 80 million people.

“It’s the oil that people use for their own nutrition,” says Sam Gwali. “They store the nuts all year round and process the oil at home when it’s needed, and also share it.  A neighbor can borrow from a friend, saying ‘Mine is finished’’

Gwali is talking about oil from Vitellaria paradoxasubspecies nilotica, a tree that has been his intellectual quest for 20 years. He is in Nairobi at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) for a training to which top plant breeders from around the continent have been recruited. His aim is more productive, earlier-maturing trees. (Shea trees typically mature in 15 to 20 years).

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Indigenous African crops meet state of the art plant breeding

Dr Achigan-Dako during a leaf sampling exercise for marker-assisted selection at the African Plant Breeding Academy training in Nairobi. Photo by C Watson/ICRAF
Dr Achigan-Dako during a leaf sampling exercise for marker-assisted selection at the African Plant Breeding Academy training in Nairobi. Photo by C Watson/ICRAF

Few plant breeders in the world work on indigenous African crops. In fact, the lack of research on these nutritious and locally valued plants has been almost total. But Dr Enoch Achigan-Dako, a researcher from Benin, is working on four at the same time. He is equally passionate about each and, between training sessions at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), expounds on them one by one.

“Amaranthus can never disappear from our farms,” says the senior lecturer at the University of Abomey- Calavi. “Within one month, you have your plant. But I want to cross Amaranthus cruentus with A. dubius for bigger leaves and taller plants. I also want to delay the flowering time, because once the plant flowers, vegetable sellers think it is old. They want tender leaves.”…Read more

Forest people of DR Congo guide orphan crop research

Tasked to identify orphan crops for DRC by the national agricultural research body, Dr Dowiya takes a leaf sample from a bean plant in an exercise at the African Plant Breeding Academy at ICRAF
Tasked to identify orphan crops for DRC by the national agricultural research body, Dr Dowiya takes a leaf sample from a bean plant in an exercise at the African Plant Breeding Academy at ICRAF

Dr Benjamin Dowiya Nzawele, 42, arrived at the World Agroforestry Centre, also known as ICRAF, in Nairobi with an important brief from his national agricultural research institute: To “identify orphan crops not currently taken into account by INERA, their contribution in the context of climate change and how to improve them”.

The scientist from the L’Institut National pour l’Etude et la Recherche Agronomique (INERA) station at Mulungu in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had come to ICRAF to attend the African Plant Breeding Academy (AfPBA), where he and 28 other senior plant breeders from Africa are learning new genomic methods for plant breeding. But he had already been out of his duty station for some time.

“I started my search for orphan crops from Yangambi where there was a large research station during the colonial period. It still has a herbarium. Then I went into the Okapi Wildlife Reserve. Pygmies were the ones showing me the forest. These pygmies do not cultivate fields but collect everything they need. They follow the season by the fruit. They know everything.”

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Forgotten Crops May Hold Key to Nutritional Security

This Southern Burkina Faso farmer holds a handful of shea nuts, an orphan crop in Africa. (Catharine Watson/World Agroforestry Centre)
This Southern Burkina Faso farmer holds a handful of shea nuts, an orphan crop in Africa. (Catharine Watson/World Agroforestry Centre)

UC Davis is partnering in a global plant-breeding consortium that is fighting malnutrition and poverty in Africa by improving the traditional crops of the continent.

The African Orphan Crop Consortium ­­— conceived by Howard Shapiro, a senior fellow at UC Davis and the chief agricultural officer at Mars, Incorporated — is making great strides in its ambitious attempt to map and make public the genomes of 101 indigenous African foods.

These “orphan” crops are crucial to African livelihood and nutrition, but have been mostly ignored by science and seed companies because they are not traded internationally like commodities such as rice, corn and wheat.

The genomic data on African orphan crops will help plant breeders more quickly select for traits that improve the nutritional content, productivity and resilience of Africa’s most important food crops.

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