The UK-CGIAR Centre has added a new project to its portfolio: Genetic Improvement of Bambara Groundnut (Vigna subterranea) for Future Nutrition and Climate Resilience. The research for the project aims to create the genomic and breeding resources and technologies needed to develop new varieties of Bambara groundnut, a crop with huge potential to help the agricultural sector address global food and nutrition security challenges in the face of climate change.
Professor Uta Paszkowskio of the University of Cambridge said “Bambara is a hardy climate resilient crop with several nutritional and soil health improvement qualities. Despite being widely adopted and having many agricultural and dietary benefits, the plant remains underutilized due to yield instability, long cooking times and adaptation issues.”
Dr Paszkowski continued “There is a real need to develop cultivars with improved genetic traits. The project aims to create the research platforms needed to do this.”
As part of the project work, the University of Cambridge will be partnering with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) with University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and CSIR-Crops Research Institute, Ghana, acting as the local partners. The research consortium also includes the UK’s Crop Science Centre, the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, the Kirkhouse Trust and the University of Nottingham.
Dr Hapson Mushoriwa of ICRISAT said: “The scientists working on this project have decades of experience in crop genetics and world leading expertise in fields such as legume breeding, crop transformation and gene editing in cereals. We want to take a complimentary approach to the research, harnessing the diverse range of expertise and resources each of the partners bring to the consortium.”
The research will build upon existing Bambara groundnut improvement programmes such as the Kirkhouse Trust-supported Bambara Breeding Initiative as well as current scientific partnerships between University of Nottingham-ICRISAT and IITA-University KwaZulu-Natal. The work will advance both the genetic tools and the conventional and precision breeding capabilities necessary to accelerate the release of improved varieties of Bambara groundnut. This will help promote wider adoption of the crop by farmers in Africa and potentially other geographical areas like India.
The teams will be working in Africa, India and the UK, reflecting the project’s focus on addressing the needs of farmers in the areas of Bambara groundnut production in West and Southern Africa (Nigeria, South Africa). Developing enhanced varieties of the crop will not only aid the national agricultural priorities of the target countries but also contribute to the broader goals of improving nutrition and sustainable food production. As a significant proportion of small holder farmers in Africa are women, improved varieties with more stable yields may provide farmers in Africa, especially the female ones, with greater economic stability.
Image credit: Crop Trust/Flickr