Research focusing on traditional crops that are often ignored and known as "orphan crops" shows they contain minerals and vitamins that are essential for the body and are mostly consumed by rural African people.
Various agricultural research institutions in Africa are currently carrying out research among crops including sweet potatoes and other traditional vegetables mainly to improve yields and controlling and lowering disease tolerance.
This is because there is need to urgently match Africa's booming population with adequate food systems, because if people are well nourished they become healthy and productive which is good for development. As the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) puts it "good nutrition begins with food and agriculture".
The continent is the second most populous after Asia with about 2.1 billion people. One in three people suffer from some form of malnutrition according to the 2016 Global Nutrition Report. Societal costs of malnutrition have resulted in 11 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) being lost every year in Africa.
Innovations
Now new research is looking at innovative ways to boost agricultural production to feed the continent's booming population by focusing on the orphaned crops that have been used for many years by Africa's poor to relieve famine. Agricultural research is mainly concerned at increasing yields, adding of essential nutrients otherwise known as crop Bio- fortification, and control and lowering of diseases.
Research has particularly been targeted at traditional vegetables because there are highly nutritious. The Water Research Commission has identified three inter-related challenges in sub-Saharan Africa which are water scarcity, population growth, and food and nutritional insecurity of essential micronutrients one of it is vitamin A.
This also means agricultural production needs to increase against a backdrop of issues such as climate change (extreme weather, flooding, and droughts), soil fertility depletion, and land degradation. The majority of Africa's population live in areas with poor soil fertility, and in addition, there are problems of access to capital and agricultural inputs and farming methods used by most Africans, which affects yields.
Researchers are also focusing on the sweet potato crop because it is the seventh most produced food crop in the world after maize, rice, wheat, potato, cassava and barley. That's according to FAO. And as a tuber crop it is the third most important after potato and cassava.
It is a staple food in Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. It is also a common crop among poor farmers because it grows in marginal conditions with limited agricultural inputs and low labour requirements. And again, efforts and research are underway to improve sweet potato yield and make it more disease tolerant.
Sweet potato roots produce more edible energy per hectare per day than wheat, rice or cassava and contains considerable amounts of carbohydrates, protein, fibre, pro-vitamin A, Vitamin C, riboflavin, thiamine and niacin. It has been proven in many countries that Orange fleshed sweet potato variety, for instance, can be used to combat and alleviate vitamin A deficiency.
This explains why Crop bio- fortification of sweet potatoes is in progress in most Sub-Saharan Africa including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Mozambique, Ghana, Madagascar and South Africa.
