Underutilized Plants for Wellbeing and Sustainable Development Monty Jones Executive Director

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Underutilized Plants for Wellbeing and
Sustainable Development Monty Jones Executive
Director
Forum for Agricultural Research inAfrica (FARA)
International Symposium on Underutilized Plant
Species for Food, Nutrition, Income and
Sustainable Development 3-7 March 2008 Arusha,
Tanzania
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Underutilized crops

• Underutilized crops have traditionally been
  used for food, fibre, fodder, oil and medicinal
  plants
• their potential contribution to food security,
  nutrition, health, income generation, and
  ecosystem services for the wellbeing of mankind
  is still largely under-exploited
• aim to stop and indeed, reverse the biodiversity
  loss in farming systems
• concerned with developing agricultural
  landscapes and markets that work for smallholder
  farmers and local agricultural micro-entrepreneurs
  .

Ecosystem diversity
Intra-specific
Inter-specific
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• estimated 7,000 species playing a crucial role in
  poor people's livelihoods and many of these have
  a significant potential for commercialization
• only 150 plant species have been noted for use
  and commercialization on a global scale and rice,
  wheat and maize dominate and together, these
  provide over 50 of the world's protein and
  calorie needs.
• Alongside their commercial potential however,
  many underutilized plant species also provide
  important environmental services.

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• FARA-led Agricultural Biodiversity Initiative for
  Africa (ABIA) aims to promote conservation and
  sustainably USE
• Challenges
• (i) weak knowledge base on the significance of
  agricultural biodiversity, including its value to
  society, and potential for development
• (ii) too much emphasis on plants especially the
  main staples and the neglect of others
• (iii) over-emphasis on conservation for future
  use at expense of USE and management for present
  and future challenges
• (iv) gene banks often seen as independent organ
  in the maintenance of agricultural biodiversity,
  with little or no link with other arms of
  agricultural research and with communities
• (v) policy and strategies that do not often
  directly promote wellbeing.

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• efforts in agricultural biodiversity management
  and USE, at both country and regional levels,
  have been inadequate and largely uncoordinated,
  due both to financial and policy limitations. The
  inadequacies have worked against optimizing
  benefits from these resources, and contributed to
  the loss of valuable genetic resources in Africa.
  
• the only sustainable way to guarantee the success
  of a biodiversity agenda, and indeed to conserve
  any countrys natural resources, is to ensure
  that policy actions lead to socioeconomic
  transformation and improved quality of life
• shift in paradigm in which conservation was
  largely seen as a Government responsibility, to
  one where biodiversity protection is viewed as a
  profitable business opportunity for both
  mainstream enterprise and small business
• need to develop business models that make sound
  use of available natural resources, with a view
  to generate dividends for all levels of society
  especially the economically vulnerable rural
  communities
• emerging interest on underutilized species and in
  particular minor crops, demonstrate renewed
  public and private attention on biodiversity and
  its sustainable use of new crops for new uses,
  and new markets, hence this international
  conference is well placed.

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• agronomic traits, appearance, processing
  qualities, taste, storability, nutritional
  elements, a range of possible uses, and
  environmental adaptability have all contributed
  to the success of the worlds major crops
• successful improvement and promotion of neglected
  underutilized crops has been constrained by the
  aforementioned challenges
• further worsened by the limited number of orphan
  crop germplasm in gene banks and the limited
  number of scientists and development agents
  working on these minor crops
• obvious that crop diversification at all levels
  and all types of agro-ecologies is the most
  crucial element of sustainable ecosystem services
• narrow portfolio of global agriculture therefore
  raises major concerns on how effectively, major
  crops alone, can contribute to food security and
  poverty alleviation, improved nutrition, income,
  and sustainable ecosystem services.

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FOOD SECURITY IN AFRICA CASE OF NERICA
from Asia
to Africa
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NERICAs New Rices for Africa

• significant contribution of the African rice
  cultivarOryza glaberrima, an underutilized and
  fading specie to societal wellbeing
• 1990s WARDA researchers began to screen WARDAs
  holdings of African rice cultivars, having
  discovered that O. glaberrima an underutilized
  specie, had a number of agronomic properties
  suitable for use by farmers working in low input
  conditions
• influenced the decision to re-open the
  possibility of hybridising the high yielding,
  reduced lodging and shattering associated with
  the Asian riceO. sativa with the highly stress
  resilient African glaberimma.
• released as NERICA (new rices for Africa) types
• NERICAs provide a welcome relief for Africas
  rice farmers and provide new opportunity for
  sustainable agricultural development especially
  in rainfed environments where most of Africas
  rice farmers earn a living

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Birth of the NERICAs Crossing African rice with
Asian rice
O. glaberrima as male parent
O. sativa as female parent
BC1F1 population (O. sativa x O. glaberrima)
BC2F3 population (O. sativa x O. glaberrima)
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African Rice - Oryza glaberrima

• Domesticated 3,500 years ago
• Hardy drought resistant
• Prone to lodging and shattering
• Low yield

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Asian rice - Oryza sativa

• High yield
• Low resistance to African pest diseases
• Low weed competitiveness

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Creating new interspecific progenies
the anther culture process
Anther culture plants
Calli derived from anthers on induction medium
vegetative phase
Regenerating and tillering
Three ploidy levels Haploid, Diploid Polyploid
reproductive phase
Plantlets on rooting medium
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Traits of NERICAs

• From sativa parents
• Non-shattering grains
• Secondary branches giving higher yield
• Responsiveness to mineral fertilizer
• From glaberrima parents
• Weed competitiveness
• Drought tolerance
• Resistance to African gall midge, rice yellow
  mottle virus, blast disease
• Taste and aroma
• NERICA has higher protein content than its parents

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Achieving impact through participatory approaches

• Participatory Varietal Selection
• 3-year program involving NARS farmers
• Year 1, rice garden of promising varieties
  farmers local varieties
• Year 2, farmers plant their selected varieties
• Year 3, farmers expand planted area of selected
  varieties

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Adding value to Participatory Varietal Selection
- PVS

• Community-based seed system Entrepreneurship
  adds value to PVS
• Farmers trained to become seed producers
• Quality seeds made available to large number of
  farmers within 4-5 yrs
• Challenge
• sustainable development of private seed
  entrepreneurs

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Facing the challenges
Multi-institutional collaboration among
scientific and development communities
. The NERICA success
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Diffusion and Adoption of NERICA in Cote dIvoire

• NERICA adoption rate among the population stood
  at 27 in 2000
• NERICA adoption rate among the population
  projected to rise rapidly from the 2000 level,
  reaching 68 as early as 2006.
• projected long-run NERICA adoption rate of 76
  (reached after 25 years)

Source WARDA
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NERICA Diffusion and Adoption in Guinea
Total actual and Potential areas under NERICA in
Guinea
Source WARDA
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Impact of NERICA adoption in Benin

• Impact on rice productivity
• Impact on rice yield 914.9 kg/ha
• Impact on rice income 1959 FCFA per capita
• Impact on child schooling
• 3 increase in school attendance rate
• About 5,000 CFA increase per child in school
  expenditures
• Impact on child health
• 5 increase in the hospital attendance frequency
  when sick
• About 7,000CFA increase in health expenses per
  sick child

Source WARDA
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Thank You !!