Increasing Food Production in Africa by Boosting the Productivity of Understudied Crops

Abstract

Abstract:The Green Revolution has enabled Asian countries to boost their crop production enormously. However, Africa has not benefitted from this agricultural revolution since it did not consider local, but important crops grown in the continent. In addition to their versatile adaptation to extreme environmental conditions, African indigenous crops provide income for subsistence farmers and serve as staple food for the vast majority of low-income consumers. These crops, which are composed of cereals, legumes, vegetables and root crops, are commonly known as underutilized or orphan crops. Recently, some of these under-researched crops have received the attention of the national and international research community, and modern improvement techniques including diverse genetic and genomic tools have been applied in order to boost their productivity. The major bottlenecks affecting the productivity of these crops are unimproved genetic traits such as low yield and poor nutritional status and environmental factors such as drought, weeds and pests. Hence, an agricultural revolution is needed to increase food production of these under-researched crops in order to feed the ever-increasing population in Africa. Here, we present both the benefits and drawbacks of major African crops, the efforts being made to improve them, and suggestions for some future directions.

Raising Crop Productivity in Africa through Intensification

“…Studies on the yield potential and gap for several of these crops including cassava and tef showed that crop productivity could be increased several-folds by using improved genotypes and/or management (for review, [8]). Since some studies showed that agricultural production can be improved in Africa through optimum use of inputs such as fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides [66,67], this sector needs to be given priority.…”

Diversifying crops for food and nutrition security - a case of teff

“…One such example is illustrated by the Teff Research Project at the University of Bern in Switzerland, which has identified several semi‐dwarf and lodging‐tolerant teff lines in an EMS‐mutagenised population of more than 5000 lines (Tadele et al , ). These promising lines were then introgressed into high‐yielding teff cultivars, and the advanced breeding lines were evaluated in the field in Ethiopia (Tadele & Assefa, ). The first semi‐dwarf lodging‐tolerant teff mutant line, named kegne, was successfully developed from this mutagenised population (Jöst et al , ).…”

Genetic diversity in tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter]

“…When this occurs, both the yield and the quality of the grain and the straw are severely reduced and both manual and mechanical harvesting are impeded. Various attempts have been made by the research community to develop lodging-resistant tef cultivars (Assefa et al, 2011; Tadele and Assefa, 2012) but presently no cultivar with reasonable lodging resistance has been obtained.…”