UC Davis, in partnership with the African Orphan Crops Consortium, is working to improve the indigenous crops of Africa in order to eradicate stunting, a medical condition resulting from malnutrition and chronic hunger.

The African Orphan Crops Consortium was launched in 2012 by Dr. Howard-Yana Shapiro, a senior fellow at UC DavisCollege of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and chief agricultural officer at Mars, Incorporated, who took on the task of sequencing the genomes of 101 indigenous African foods in order to help plant breeders improve these foods’ nutritional content, productivity and resiliency.

“We were told, in order to have any impact on nutrition, we would need to improve at least 100 crops,” Shapiro said in a press release. “In the end, we went with 101 crops, including the baobab tree, which can survive even the worst drought. You can eat its leaves, which are actually quite tasty.”

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This new guide is intended to support those working in a molecular biology laboratory.

Tim Wilkes, researcher in LGC’s Molecular Biology team, and co-author of the guide, explains, “An analyst working in any kind of laboratory will require a basic set of practical skills, but molecular biology laboratories provide scenarios and analytical materials which demand specific practical considerations.”

This new best practice guide covers the skills and other measures required to produce valid results in a molecular biology laboratory − results that are not compromised by poor practical technique, possible cross-contamination or non-validated methodology.

There are sections on basic practices, such as measuring mass or volume, and preparing solutions of known concentration. Additional skills that relate to the nature of the materials being handled in a molecular biology laboratory, such as preventing contamination of the samples and protecting the analyst, critical concerns for molecular biologists, are also detailed.

Practical laboratory skills for molecular biologists is freely available for download.

This guide has been produced with support from the UK National Measurement System, funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Across Africa, some of the most nutritious crops are the indigenous, traditional foods that grow in the wild or in backyard gardens. People have eaten foods like amaranth, okra, and breadfruit for centuries, but most of them have never been grown in formal agriculture systems and their seeds never bred for qualities like yield or higher nutrient content. The continent’s major cash food crops are far less healthy grains, mainly corn and rice.

When Howard-Yana Shapiro, a world-renowned plant scientist and chief agricultural officer at the food giant Mars, Incorporated, attended a lecture about childhood stunting in Africa, at the University of California, Davis by Dr. Christine Stewart, he thought he could help by improving the quality of crops that millions in rural parts of the continent were already eating.

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