African Orphan Crops Consortium sparks a movement

The African Orphan Crops Consortium launched with a lofty goal in 2013: to help scientists in Africa develop more nutritious, productive and resilient varieties of commonly used but rarely studied crops to improve public health. 

A decade in, the consortium has trained 161 crop scientists across the continent through the African Plant Breeding Academy, leading to the development of new crop varieties with the potential to feed and nourish 700 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, according to an October report issued by the AOCC.  

“The mission of the program is to make nutritious African crops productive,” said Allen Van Deynze, based in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences and the AOCC's scientific director. “The goal is to have better varieties to allow farmers to go beyond sustenance.”

Prevent stunting in children

The roots of AOCC began, in part, at UC Davis when senior fellow and plant scientist Howard-Yana Shapiro began thinking about ways to prevent nutritional stunting, which impairs growth and development in children. In 2011, he heard Christine Stewart, of the Department of Nutrition, present at the Dean’s Council about chronic hunger and malnutrition causing stunting in African children. "It was shocking to hear," Shapiro recalled.

He discussed the problem with Ibrahim Mayaki, then-CEO of the African Union's development arm, AUDA-NEPAD. The consortium was founded to help local scientists improve the nutritional value of staple food crops.

“Stunted children do not reach their full potential, physically or mentally,” said Shapiro, the consortium’s founder. “The crops will be bred to improve the nutrition, yield, climatic resilience, pest and disease resistance, and efficiency of water and nutrient use."

The consortium has grown from six partners to 40, representing government, industry, health, wildlife, genetic and other sectors. It serves as a pipeline for introducing local plant breeders to current technologies, strategies, tools and resources to create new crop varieties. “The key to the AOCC is the highly skilled plant breeders and scientists in African universities and government institutions” Shapiro said.

Focusing attention on different crops 

The focus is on 101 so-called orphan crops, which are nutritious but have not benefited from breeding attention and improvements. 

“They are local crops, so they grow well,” said Van Deynze, who also is director of the UC Davis Seed Biotechnology Center and associate director of the campus' Plant Breeding Center. “With research, we can make them more productive and increase nutrition.”

The academy is coordinated by UC Davis and hosted by the Center for International Forestry Research, or CIFOR-World Agroforestry, based in Nairobi, Kenya.  As of May 2023, the academy had graduated 151 plant breeders from 28 African nations, and 40 percent of the students have been women. Last year, it also launched a CRISPR course, training 10 scientists from six countries in gene editing.  

“The academy has empowered crop improvement scientists with the knowledge, skills and tools to utilize the latest proven approaches and technologies in developing improved varieties with the traits that farmers want and consumers need,” said Rita Mumm, the consortium’s director of capacity building and mobilization. “Collectively, these scientists represent a movement toward nutritional security for Africans and an end to stunting.”

Other AOCC highlights:  

• Academy students have developed 143 improved varieties of orphan crop plant cultivars. 
• Academy alum have won nearly $174.8 million competitive grants and other funding for crop improvement and training.  
• Academy alum have published more than 665 peer-reviewed papers. 
• Breeders from the second plant breeding class formed the African Plant Breeders Association, which has 400 members, creating a community of practice.
• AOCC and public institutions have delivered genomic sequences on 75 orphan crops.

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The original version of this article first appeared on the news website of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.