Abstract
Main conclusion
Due to significant contributions of orphan crops in the economy of the developing world, scientific studies need to be promoted on these little researched but vital crops of smallholder farmers and consumers.
Abstract
Food security is the main challenge in the developing world, particularly in the least developed countries. Orphan crops play a vital role in the food security and livelihood of resource-poor farmers and consumers in these countries. Like major crops, there are members of all food types—cereals, legumes, vegetables and root and tuber crops, that are considered to be orphan crops. Despite their huge importance for present and future agriculture, orphan crops have generally received little attention by the global scientific community. Due to this, they produce inferior yields in terms of both quantity and quality. The major bottlenecks affecting the productivity of these crops are little or no selection of improved genetic traits, extreme environmental conditions and unfavorable policy. However, some orphan crops have recently received the attention of the global and national scientific community where advanced research and development initiatives have been launched. These initiatives which implement a variety of genetic and genomic tools targeted major constraints affecting productivity and/or nutritional quality of orphan crops. In this paper, some of these initiatives are briefly described. Here, I provide key suggestions to relevant stakeholders regarding improvement of orphan crops. Concerted efforts are urgently needed to advance the research and development of both the major and orphan crops so that food security will be achieved and ultimately the livelihood of the population will be improved.
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Adapted from (FAOSTAT 2018)
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Abbreviations
- AOCC:
-
African Orphan Crops Consortium
- AVRDC:
-
World Vegetable Center
- BBSRC:
-
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
- BGI:
-
Beijing Genomics Institute
- BMGF:
-
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- CCRP:
-
Collaborative Crop Research Program, McKnight Foundation
- CEPLAS:
-
Cluster of Excellence in Plant Science
- CFF:
-
Crops for Future
- CGIAR:
-
Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research
- CIAT:
-
International Center for Tropical Agriculture
- CIMMYT:
-
International Maize and Improvement Center
- CIP:
-
International Potato Center
- CRISPR/Cas9:
-
Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated 9
- ECA:
-
Economic Commission for Africa
- FAO:
-
Food and Agriculture Organization
- GBS:
-
Genotyping by sequencing
- GWAS:
-
Genome wide association study
- ICARDA:
-
International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas
- ICRAF:
-
World Agroforestry Centre
- ICRISAT:
-
International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
- IFAD:
-
International Fund for Agricultural Development
- IITA:
-
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture
- LDC:
-
Least Developed Countries
- NEPAD:
-
New Partnership for Africa’s Development
- NRC:
-
National Research Council of the USA
- ODAP:
-
β-N-Oxalyl-L-α, β-diaminopropanoic acid
- PPP:
-
Public–private partnership
- SASSA:
-
Sustainable Agriculture for Sub-Saharan Africa
- SFSA:
-
Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture
- TILLING:
-
Targeting induced local lesions in genomes
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The Research in my lab is financially supported by the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture and University of Bern.
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Tadele, Z. Orphan crops: their importance and the urgency of improvement. Planta 250, 677–694 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-019-03210-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-019-03210-6