Over a year ago, Grow Further proudly announced our first grants to two worthy projects we feel will be game changers for smallholder farmers. One is a project to develop an advanced smartphone application in Tanzania to warn farmers when their crops are threatened by plant diseases and pest infestations. The other is a push in Ghana to develop and promote wide adoption of the first commercial variety of the Bambara groundnut, a so-called “forgotten crop” or, as we would like to put it, an opportunity crop.
On the surface, it would appear that the Bambara groundnut project is the less technically complicated of these two innovative research and development projects. Well, our partners in Ghana have just submitted their latest report to Grow Further providing an update on their work, and this report demonstrates just how technically sophisticated their project truly is.
The Bambara groundnut project is making great progress, but there’s a lot of hard work ahead. Thanks to our donor members, the team at Ghana’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research—Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (CSIR-SARI) is zeroing in on a new variety of Bambara groundnut plant that’s fast-maturing, high-yielding, and resilient in the dry and often hostile climates where it must win over farmers.
The Bambara groundnut is a little-known legume native to West Africa. It’s famous as a crop mainly cultivated by female farmers. Bambara groundnuts are grown, traded, and consumed in much of Ghana but it is hardly considered a staple crop there, or anywhere for that matter. CSIR-SARI hopes to change this.
It’s a good idea.
Bambara groundnuts do well in arid climates. They’re also highly nutritious. This makes them well-suited for adapting rain-fed agriculture to climate change—more droughts and dry spells will come, and Bambara groundnuts can survive these stressful periods better than some other plants.
Asking farmers what they want
CSIR-SARI launched their effort by first fanning out to communities to see what traits were most valued by current or would-be Bambara groundnut farmers, primarily women. Their survey was very thorough: they spoke with hundreds of respondents, and their questionnaire was comprised of “172 questions and 365 data points” CSIR-SARI noted. They had a pretty good picture of what traits farmers valued most by the end of February last year.
Out of 604 farmers queried, 41% ranked higher yields as their number one desired trait to see in a new Bambara groundnut variety. A third of respondents requested that varieties boast “early maturity.” Women farmers said that men’s plots within the household often get priority on planting equipment, leaving their Bambara groundnuts to be planted with limited time left in the growing season.
Creating a new commercial variety
Knowing better what the farmers were looking for, CSIR-SARI then set out to develop a new variety of this crop that can satisfy both conditions and survive the worst that climate change is likely to deliver. Researchers are working to create new crosses as well as to select the best seeds among existing accessions, of which there is fortunately enormous diversity to work with.
Crossing Bambara groundnuts is not easy compared to, say, maize. Maize is wind-pollinated and crossing two batches of uniform seed, known as lines, is a relatively simple matter of planting the two lines close by and chopping off the tassels from the female parent before they bear pollen. Bambara groundnut, in contrast, is a primarily self-pollinated plant with tiny flowers. “Crossing or hybridization are still ongoing,” CSIR-SARI reported.
Nevertheless, they’ve seen some promising developments. One potential candidate variety with some interesting genotypes that they’re looking for is yielding 11 times more food than the lowest-yielding genotype they’ve encountered. “Promising lines from the candidate accessions were identified to have grain yields above the group average for each set of evaluation, and these lines will be constituted into an advanced trial for multi-location testing in the coming seasons,” CSIR-SARI reports.
CSIR-SARI researchers are using molecular markers, essentially photographs of DNA, to better understand which seeds carry desirable genes. DNA sampling can be a bit tricky—you need a quality sample to get the best picture of the genetic makeup of plants and to identify the traits you are aiming for in the genetic code. Our partners in Ghana seem confident that they are on the right track here.
“All DNA extracted meets concentration and quality parameters for downstream activity,” CSIR-SARI said in their latest report. “The few samples with low concentration will be taken through a DNA purification step or re-extraction step to improve on the concentration and quality.”
“Bambara groundnut has been referred to as one of the ‘crops for the millennium’,” they wrote. “The crop has the potential to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and eliminate poverty.”
Working with farmers
They’re also busy with on-farm trials and training. Researchers are training farmers on weed management and how to improve soils using biochar, the latter through national radio programs as well as in-person workshops.
It’s said that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Likewise, widespread commercial success with an opportunity crop like the Bambara groundnut won’t happen overnight. But judging by the progress CSIR-SARI has made to date, the degree to which they are working with stakeholder communities, the level of on-site training they are providing, and the sophistication of their lab work and field trials, we are feeling even more confident about the Bambara groundnut’s future in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. So are our partners in Ghana.
“Bambara groundnut has been referred to as one of the ‘crops for the millennium’,” they wrote. “The crop has the potential to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and eliminate poverty.”
Developing the world’s first commercial variety of a high-yielding, climate-resilient, nutritious Bambara groundnut is a great idea. CSIR-SARI is staffed with skilled, talented researchers who can pull it off. And our donors and volunteers at Grow Further, committed to improving food security, help to make it all possible. Prior to receiving a grant from Grow Further, CSIR-SARI had been working for 20 years to find funding for research on Bambara groundnut.
Our work in Ghana epitomizes all that we are trying to achieve here at Grow Further: connecting people and ideas for a more food-secure future.
— Grow Further
Photo credit: Women tending to Bambara groundnut plants. Alhassan Nuhu Jinbaani, CSIR-SARI.