VOA常速英语:Local African grains among “lost” crops

An NGO here in Washington says the continent is home to indigenous crops that experts consider “lost” to modern research. The NGO, the National Research Council, says the word “lost,” in this context, means the plants haven’t been studied and developed enough by scientists to determine their full benefits, even as millions on the continent suffer malnutrition. The council has published three books under the title “Lost Crops of Africa” -- one on grains, one on vegetables and one on fruits.

Adi Damania is a genetic resources data analyst with the Department of Plant Sciences at the Davis campus of the University of California. In this fourth of a five-part series, the genetic scientist says at the top of the list of untapped grains is tef: 

“Tef is a grain grown in Ethiopia, Eritrea, in that part of the African continent. It’s a staple food there and it forms the ingredients for injera bread…. It’s a crop which grows in the low rainfall areas and it needs very low soil inputs as well. It is more nutritious than wheat; the seeds have a greater proportion of bran and germ, and also because tef is produced as a whole grain flower,” he says.

The agricultural expert points out that unlike the other lost crops, Tef does have relative - though limited - success as an export for Ethiopian restaurants in Europe and North America, mainly because of the increasing popularity of Ethiopian cuisine.

Damania mentions millet as another very significant grain, “The African early millet, that I’m referring to…the African millets…are really huge. The head of the crop can be as long as ten feet in height. It’s an extremely useful crop in places like Chad and Nigeria and that part of the world.”

The university agricultural specialist says a third lost crop is sorghum:

“This is a brown, red-headed sorghum. Sorghum has got great variety in the head formation. The head can be tight and compact like a baseball or it can be loose. This is the tight, compact, baseball sized head and it is grown in Somalia and Kenya.… And that part of the world gets rainfall for only a very short period of time so it’s a crop for planting when you don’t have the rains. It’s stored underground and consumed throughout the year,” he says.

Adi Damania says the nutritional value of crops like tef, millet and sorghum go beyond meeting nutritional needs:

“In fact they are even more healthy because, for example, the fat content of tef is only two-point-six, whereas the protein content is even higher than wheat’s. Therefore I would consider [them] to be equally nutritious as the major grains of the western hemisphere like wheat, barley and corn.”

The UCLA conservation scientist says that increasing export potential for the lost crops is better suited for Asian countries than western ones primarily because the most popular cereals in the West are wheat, barley and corn. But he says that that could change if Western countries can afford to import these grains as well as the more familiar ones, “There should be greater publicity and greater awareness to be broadcast from TV programs and radio programs…that these foods are available if people so choose to consume them.”

If you’d like more information or want to read the Lost Crops of Africa go to the National Academy Press website at www.nap.edu

By the way, these books are available free in Africa!