Cereals in Africa: from advanced to underutilized crops

Rationale

Underutilized plant species are defined as “those species with under-exploited potential for contribution to food security, health (nutritional and/or medicinal), income generation, and environmental services”. Orphan grain crops can help meet a major worldwide challenge: to sustainably increase crop production in marginal lands that are mostly unfit for growing maize, wheat or other high yielding crops but that must be used for sustainable food production in the next two decades to respond to growing demand. Although not the “most orphan” crops, African rice Oryza glaberrima , pearl millet, sorghum and durum wheat do not benefit from the same level of knowledge and genomic resources as model crop species.

Objectives

i) To develop a comprehensive understanding of wild and cultivated cereal diversity at a continental scale.

ii) To investigate potential diversity hot-spots for cultivated and wild populations with the view to refining in situ conservation approaches.

iii) To identify the main evolutionary factors responsible for the observed structures of diversity, with special emphasis on domestication processes, and to propose new diversity indicators.

 iv) To obtain preliminary results on the diversity of underutilized cereals in a limited number of study sites and to develop a research initiative on these crops based on a multi-stakeholder research network.

Actions planned

WP 1: Complementing current knowledge on major cereal global diversity and evolution in Africa.

• Task 1: Refining the Sorghum domestication scenario.
• Task 2: Domestication of O. glaberrima
• Task 3: History of the evolution of maize after introduction in Africa including germplasm collecting in West Africa
• Task 4: Geographical origin and spreading process of pearl millet

 WP 2: Targeted in situ diversity description

• Task 1: Analysis of in-situ  diversity of wild and cultivated sorghums in two regions of Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Task 2: Collection of rice Oryza glaberrima landraces in West Africa and relevant information
• Task 3: Collecting durum wheat landraces in Morocco and relevant information on social, human and environmental factors which structure production.
• Task 4: A pilot study on the impact of factors on the structure of genetic diversity through varietal nomenclature systems and seed exchange; the example of sorghum in Kenya.

WP 3: Underutilized species

• Task 1. Fonio in Guinea as a test study.
• Task 2. Collection of preliminary data on underutilized cereals in other project study sites.
• Task 3. Develop a concept note for a research proposal and organize a planning workshop.

Project team

Project leaders and responsible staff for the work packages