Agrobiodiversity

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the world has lost 90% of the agrobiodiversity for 20 of its major staple food crops.

Africa's biodiversity is rich but very vulnerable. To enable African farmers to keep pace with pests and pathogens, and abiotic stresses, diversity is needed to mine traits and characteristics for breeding better crops.

Population growth, an increase in food demand, industrialization, urbanization, mechanization of farming, and commercialization of agriculture all contributed to the erosion of biodiversity. Moreover, increased food consumption and crop losses from extreme weather conditions have triggered soaring food prices, jeopardizing food security and intensifying poverty in low-income nations, especially in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

R4D goal

Driven by these concerns, our research for development (R4D) on agrobiodiversity has focused on collecting diverse plant genetic material or germplasm from Africa's major food crops in East, Central, and West Africa. Genetically diverse crops stored in our genebank carry beneficial traits that can be used to increase crop yields and enhance the adaptability of varieties through research and breeding programs.

Our collections are held in trust on behalf of humanity under the auspices of the United Nations and are distributed for food and agriculture research.

We apply biotechnologies and new diagnostic tools for the efficient, long-term conservation and use of genetic resources of staple and underutilized crops and nonplant organisms.

R4D outputs and outcomes

Our genebank at IITA, Nigeria, holds more than 3,000 germplasm accessions each of cassava and yam, and over 15,000 accessions of cowpea. Scientists have been collecting these accessions across Africa since the genebank's inception in the 1970s. In 2008, IITA began characterizing yam and cassava accessions using molecular markers to identify duplicates and to establish a molecular tool for newly acquired accessions.

Efforts are also under way to establish core collections of yam and cassava using available characterization data. This will give scientists a means of assessing the range of diversity in the collections for traits of interest and link traits to commercial opportunities. Once scientists identify accessions in a core collection, they can request closely related accessions for further assessment, eliminating the need to search through the entire collection. Two core collections—a cowpea collection and a West African yam collection—have been defined.

A cowpea reference or mini core collection has also been identified through genotyping core collections through Generation Challenge Program-funded activities. The reference core collection provides breeders with a usable number of accessions which are being screened to identify accessions and genes for biotic and abiotic stress tolerance.

Our USAID-Liberia and CGIAR-assisted Sustainable Tree Crop Project (STCP) in Liberia created a public–private sector partnership to improve the economic and social well-being of smallholders and the environmental sustainability of tree crop farms for cocoa, coffee, and oil palm crops. It focuses on strengthening farmer organizations, and setting up systems that facilitate farmers' access to new technologies and to new marketing arrangements.

We also assessed the genetic diversity of 500 African local and 398 improved cassava germplasm and tested them for resistance to the cassava mosaic disease (CMD). Additionally, we assessed the genetic diversity of West African cocoa collections to help design cocoa-based multicropping systems that are more resilient to stresses.

Our R4D helps to characterize novel diversity. In 2007 we evaluated the viability of banana–plantain hybrid seeds. Also, in developing black sigatoka-resistant cultivars, we obtained some resistant hybrids. Stress tolerance tests on seedlings showed some plants with high dehydration stress tolerance.

We take care of plant health through virus diagnostics to ascertain that healthy plants are used for in vitro storage and on-farm disease management. To facilitate the distribution of healthy materials, we conduct virus diagnostic tests on cowpea, yam, and cassava.

We help scientists in their research, distributing over 60,000 accessions of various crops during the past two decades. We transferred over 2,300 accessions of cassava, 500 accessions of yam, and 250 accessions of banana and plantain from the field to the genebank for in vitro conservation. The genebank currently maintains 4,186 accessions of these crops.

We contribute to conserving humanity's agricultural heritage—we shipped nearly 7,000 unique seed samples in late 2007 from more than 36 African nations to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, an Arctic Circle facility built as a repository of last resort. Our shipment consisted of duplicates of unique varieties of domesticated and wild cowpea, maize, soybean, and Bambara groundnut.

Through this program, we provide our partners and millions of small-scale farmers with the tools, technologies, and solutions that could help enhance science, provide livelihoods, reduce consumer and producer risks, and sustain biodiversity for development.

Projects

Agrobiodiversity documents