Project

Exploring and Promoting “Orphan/Opportunity” Crops: Gynandropsis gynandra as a model

Despite an increasing awareness of the potential of "orphan" or “opportunity” crops to contribute to food security and enhanced livelihoods for farmers, coordinated research agendas to facilitate production and use of orphan crops by local communities are generally lacking. Together with a large international team, we have been working to establish valuable resources on the genomics, genetics, ethnobotany and chemical, nutritional and phenotypic diversity of several minor crops including the leafy greens Gynandropsis gynandra (African Cabbage) and Corchorus olitorius (Jute Mallow) and Colocasia esculenta (Taro).

As an example, Gynandropsis gynandra, a highly nutritious leafy green species used in Africa and Asia. We have been generating general and species-specific guidelines for participatory, genomics-assisted breeding of this orphan crop. Thus, we have generated fundamental knowledge on the ethnobotany of the crop and about its farming systems. We have complemented this by in-depth knowledge of the vitamin and metabolite contents. Efforts are now underway to develop advanced breeding lines, including F1 hybrids. Also, we have generated a reference genome and used this to investigate fundamental questions related to the evolution of C4 photosynthesis and ancient whole genome duplications.

Publications