News from PGRRI

Amaranth, a highly nutritious and resilient crop, has gained attention for its potential to address malnutrition and improve livelihoods. Recognizing its importance, farmers and scientists working together under the S4R project have been promoting it as an important indigenous leafy vegetable (ILV). The collaboration through which the promotion activities are being undertaken at Libga, a community in the Savelugu Municipality of the Northern Region is aimed at facilitating the access of farmers to important crop collections of the National genebank with which they can build resilience to climate change within their farming contexts. Libga is one of the four beneficiary communities in Ghana for this initiative. The other communities are Golinga (Tolon District), also in Northern region, Barekese (Atwima Nwabiagya District) and Boadi (Oforikrom Municipal) in the Ashanti region.

Participatory varietal selection involves the active participation of local farmers in the evaluation and selection of crop varieties. For instance, at Libga, farmers were involved in the planting, monitoring of growth, and evaluating the performance of different Amaranth genotypes in terms of yield, appearance and resistance to pests and diseases. With this approach, farmers enthusiastically joined the PVS to select Amaranth genotypes that meet their food security and climate resilience needs. Thus, the genotypes that were selected align with the specific needs and preferences of the community for wider adoption.

Germplasm User Groups have the sole objective of promoting access to and use of specific crop collections in genebanks for addressing the adaptation, production and utilisation needs of group members. The members of germplasm user groups are usually drawn from value chain actors of a specific commodity crop e.g., farmers, researchers, extensionists, traders and processors among others.

A mother trial site is an on-farm location where new crop genotypes or varieties are planted for purposes of comparison with local checks using farmer’s crop management practices. At specific crop growth stages, farmers are invited to visit the mother trial site and assess the genotypes or varieties using preference analysis.

After months of dedicated work, the farmers through the PVS identified several Amaranth genotypes that exhibited exceptional characteristics suited to the community’s agro-climatic conditions, dietary habits, shelf-life requirements, and target market preference. In addition to these, the selected genotypes produced impressive yields, making them viable options for local farmers aiming to improve their incomes and livelihoods.

The nutritional benefits of Amaranth which are well-known include high levels of protein, vitamins, and minerals. The successful selection of locally adapted Amaranth genotypes therefore has the potential to enhance the production, consumption, and nutritional intake of residents of Libga and its environs.

The collaboration between farmers and researchers at Libga is not limited to the activities of the Germplasm User Group there. Plans are underway to promote the cultivation of these promising Amaranth genotypes in the whole community. The broad objective of this initiative is to improve food security, boost local economies, and ensure a healthier future for the community.

The Participatory varietal selection of Amaranth genotypes at Libga stands as a shining example of what can be achieved when communities and scientists come together. It not only enhances agricultural prosperity but also contributes to the overall well-being of the general populace. This innovative approach to selecting and utilising plant genetic diversity to address challenges faced by farmers in their farming contexts may serve as a model for sustainable agriculture.

With a unique and diverse collection of over 6,000 accessions of crop wild relatives, improved varieties in current use and landraces that are crucial to promoting food security, agriculture, and biodiversity conservation in the country, the genebank should be a top priority for the government of Ghana. Plant breeders for instance, can use the genetic diversity of these plant resources to develop new crop varieties that are better adapted to local growing conditions, resistant to pests and diseases, and with improved nutritional quality, thereby improving food security in the country. This aligns with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 - Zero Hunger.

The CSIR-PGRRI also has regional significance beyond Ghana, as it is an essential partner in regional and global initiatives that aim to conserve and use plant genetic resources sustainably. The CSIR-PGRRI is one of a few multi-crop genebanks globally. The genetic resources conserved at this genebank can be shared with other countries in the West African sub-region, promoting regional cooperation and collaboration in plant breeding and research. This aligns with SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goals.

Ghana's genetic resources are under threat from factors such as climate change, deforestation, and urbanization. The maintenance of the CSIR-PGRRI is critical for the conservation of Ghana's genetic resources, ensuring that they are available for use now and in the future. Developing crop varieties that are more resilient to climate change can help Ghana to mitigate the impact of climate change on the agricultural sector. This aligns with SDG 13 - Climate Action.

Furthermore, the genetic resources conserved at the national genebank are essential for maintaining the country's biodiversity and supporting sustainable agriculture. Improved agricultural productivity resulting from the use of genetic resources stored at the national genebank can help reduce poverty in rural areas by increasing farmers' incomes. This aligns with SDG 1 - No Poverty.

Investing in the national genebank can also help to improve gender equality in the agricultural sector by providing women farmers with access to improved crop varieties and other plant genetic resources that are better adapted to marginal lands, which most often, women farmers and other disadvantaged segments of the population cultivate their crops on. This aligns with SDG 5 - Gender Equality.

In addition to the above, the plant genetic resources conserved at the national genebank are essential for research and development in various fields, including agriculture, biotechnology, and medicine. Researchers can use these resources to develop new technologies and products, which can create new industries and enhance economic growth.

Therefore, the government of Ghana must prioritize the maintenance of the CSIR-PGRRI by providing sufficient funding and requisite infrastructure to ensure that the genebank is properly resourced to fulfil its mandate of ensuring the long term sustainable onservation of the plant genetic resources of Ghana for use by researchers, plant breeders, and farmers. This will contribute to achieving multiple SDGs. Thus, investing in the national genebank should be considered as a strategic priority by the government of Ghana.

The writers are Researchers with the National Genebank, the CSIR-PGRRI, located at Bunso, Eastern Region, Ghana.

The CSIR-PGRRI has the mandate to collect, characterize, evaluate, document, conserve, distribute and utilize plant genetic resources (PGR) from Ghana and abroad. Our goal is to ensure the effective conservation and use of PGR for food security and sustainable agricultural development.

In the Upper East Region, Bambara Groundnut seeds are commonly called Suma and are very important in the traditional settings, mainly because they are used to prepare many foods during the performance of funerals.

They are also used for making pastries like the popular Koose which is consumed with Hausa Koko for breakfast by many Ghanaians. Bambara Groundnuts can also be cooked fresh or after they have been dried.

Despite the importance of this food crop, farmers in the Upper East Region have over the years, reduced the quantity of Bambara groundnut they cultivate during the farming season. According to some of the farmers, pest infestations and low yields account for their lack of interest in growing Bambara groundnuts.

“We do not have any chemicals for killing the insects that attack the crops”, said Sule Baalik, a Bambara Groundnut farmer in Binduri. “Also, when there are torrential rains during the farming season, you are likely to lose your harvest because Bambara Groundnuts do grow well in waterlogged fields”, he explained further.

The Plant Genetic Resources Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research [CSIR – PGRRI] has therefore, introduced some farmer varieties of Bambara Groundnut to farmers in the Binduri and Tempane districts of the Upper East Region for trials on their farms.

The Institute hopes that the move will enable farmers to identify Bambara groundnut types that are suited to their specific farming conditions and encourage more farmers to grow the food crop, as it could contribute significantly to improving Ghana’s food security.

Some of the farmer varieties introduced to the farmers are tolerant to drought and can withstand pest and disease infestation.They are also high-yielding and have an early maturity period, unlike the traditional varieties previously grown by the farmers.

Acting Director for the Plant Genetic Resources Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Dr. Daniel Ashie Kotey said; “The participatory field trials that are being conducted with farmers would lead to farmers selecting Bambara Groundnut genotypes that are suited to their farming contexts”.“And once they do that, seed producers who are part of the germplasm user groups would come onboard, pick up these seeds and multiply them”, Dr. Kotey added.He said prior to multiplying the seeds, the Seed Producers will be given training on how to produce quality seed.

The farmer varieties of the Bambara groundnut are being distributed under the Seeds for Resilience [SfR] Project which is being implemented in Ghana and four other African countries under the auspices of the Global Crop Diversity Trust based in Germany.

Patrick Attamah, a plant breeder at the Manga station of the Savannah Agriculture Research Institute of the CSIR, which is the local collaborator for the PGRRI in the Upper East Region explained that one of their core duties is “to select the varieties of Bambara Groundnut that have promise before giving them out to farmers to try on their fields”.

The farmers have welcomed the CSIR – PGRRI farmer varieties of Bambara groundnuts, with high hopes of getting improved yields that could motivate them to go into commercial production of this very important traditional food crop.

“After planting the CSIR – PGRRI varieties on my field, I see a vast difference between those and my own old varieties. Theirs are greener and growing very quickly than mine so I expect an early harvest”, said Barikisu Tahiru, a woman farmer from Tempane.

The Institute is, therefore, working in collaboration with the Crops Research Institute (CRI) to upscale the cultivation of Amaranthus (Aleefu), Corchorus (Ademe/Ayoyo), and Roselle (Sule).

It is conducting participatory varietal selection to allow farmers to choose their preferred indigenous leafy vegetable types suited to their farming conditions and contexts.

Under the Seeds for Resilience project (SfR), the PGRRI selected indigenous leafy vegetables, which thrive in poor soils and under harsh weather condition, with low input requirements.

Dr Lawrence Misa Aboagye, a Chief Research Scientist at the CSIR-PGRRI, disclosed this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency after the inspection of farmers’ field trials at Boadi in the Oforikrom Municipality of the Ashanti Region.

He said because the selected indigenous leafy vegetables had adapted to the environment, they had acquired certain characteristics that enabled them to withstand drought.

The seeds collected were multiplied last year to obtain sufficient planting materials for the farmers, he said.

“Seeds of 20 different types of these vegetables were sent to farmers at Boadi for assessment in their fields.”

The SfR project is a three-year project, started in 2019, with support from the Global Crop Diversity Trust, Germany.It has engaged farmers from the bottom-up, through which indigenous leafy vegetables and Bambara groundnut user groups have been established in the Upper East (Manga), Northern (Golinga and Libga) and the Ashanti (Boadi and Barekese).

In the Northern Region, the Institute is collaborating with the CSIR Savanna Agriculture Research Institute to implement the project.

Dr Aboagye said the farmers were allowed to select seeds suitable to their peculiar conditions, which differentiates the project from the normal convention where a research institute selects and introduces crop varieties/ genotypes to farmers.

Dr Mrs Patricia Pinamang Acheampong, the Principal Research Scientist, CSIR-CRI, expressed the hope that the participatory selection approach would help the Institutes to track farmers with various characteristics. That, she believed, would facilitate the adoption of the varieties.

Baaba Rauf Abdullai, a farmer at Boadi, encouraged his colleagues to embrace the planting of the local vegetables. He said they were highly nutritious, environmentally friendly and easy to cultivate.

Today we shed light on the efforts made behind the scenes to move the genebank’s data from paper records to the Genesys online portal by two data managers: Yaw Kwateng from the national genebank of Ghana (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research - Plant Genetic Resources Research Institute, CSIR-PGRRI), and Masiye Tembo from the national genebank of Zambia (National Plant Genetic Resources Center of Zambia, NPGRC).

Yaw Kwateng notes that genebanks do a remarkable job in the area of germplasm collecting, characterization, evaluation, conservation and promotion of the sustainable use of plant genetic resources. However, he admits that documentation of germplasm often does not keep pace with other technological and scientific advances at the genebank, which means information doesn’t reach the users who need it. He describes some of the common challenges faced by genebanks in preparation for publishing on Genesys. Some accession data generated by the genebank is still only recorded in hard copy, and frequent handling of such documents makes them fragile and eventually difficult to decipher. Then, what data has already been digitized is often stored using outdated systems such as floppy disks, or is stored only on the personal computers of staff instead of institutional servers, increasing the risk of losing important information. Finally, a lot of the data does not conform to existing standards.

All these challenges limit the ability of germplasm users to understand the diversity of germplasm available in genebanks, and camouflage the value of collections and their potential in addressing various adaptation and production bottlenecks. Such issues are more common than one might think, even in today’s highly digitized world, but can be mended by data managers and information specialists. So let’s look at the experience of introducing a comprehensive information management system with our other guest today, Masiye Tembo.

Masiye notes that the exercise of mapping existing data onto the Multi-Crop Passport Descriptors (MCPD v.2.1) is quite demanding in terms of both time and effort - almost like digitizing the entire passport dataset all over again in some cases. The process also involves rigorous validation of data, for example checking the coordinates of collecting sites and identifying data entry errors that inevitably occur when handling data in Excel, say.

The time and effort invested in consolidating and standardizing passport data could be spent on other genebank operations. So is it worth it? Masiye notes that the preparation of data for online publication has made their documentation system more robust and resulted in better documented accessions, which is a very worthwhile undertaking. For genebanks that are not yet sharing information about their collections online, this exercise provides an opportunity to become globally visible via the Genesys platform.

"The use of the MCPD template helps genebanks to capture the most important accession passport data, which could otherwise have been shelved or lost altogether. Sharing data on Genesys allows genebanks to conveniently push the data to the cloud, and means potential users of genetic resources globally can explore the collections at the press of a button."

CSIR-PGRRI has uploaded more than 1,600 accessions to Genesys so far, around half of which have been given Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) by the Plant Treaty’s DOI Registration Service.

Yaw also shares that: "Although the journey of preparing data for publication on Genesys has been very time consuming, every minute has been worth it. The benefits derived from this process have served as motivation to complete the validation and uploading of all outstanding germplasm information to Genesys. We are grateful for the support to do this."

In addition to making information on germplasm available online, Genesys includes a number of useful tools for users and genebanks alike. For instance, once the data is in Genesys, it can be easily and freely mirrored in the institutional website of the genebank. Instead of hosting and maintaining a separate database, paying for a web server and setting up a new domain name, the genebank can use Embedded Genesys to integrate data from Genesys directly into the institutional website.

The work by Masiye and Yaw, which continues apace, is part of Seeds for Resilience, a project funded by the Federal Government of Germany through the German Development Bank (KfW) and managed by the Crop Trust. The project supports capacity building in the national genebanks of Ghana, Zambia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Nigeria.

According to the research scientist, due to modernization, these nutritious leafy vegetables have been neglected and only used in a few parts of the country, especially in the Northern Region, and it's likely to face extinction if steps are not taken to protect, promote and revive its usage among Ghanaians.

It is for these reasons that, the Plant Genetic Resource and Research Institute at Bunso in collaboration with Crop Trust are embarking on a project to revive the production and consumer interest of some of the underutilized leafy vegetables known locally as Alefu, Ayoyo, sobolo and kenaf.

Speaking in an interview with UTV news, the Consultant of Crop Trust, Dr. Eva Weltzien said the project seeks to collaborate with the Plant Genetic Resource and Research Institute to come out with the preferred varieties of the leafy vegetables for the farmers to produce more feed the public.

She added that her outfit will continue to support the promotion of the neglected and underutilized leafy vegetables.

A Research Scientist with the Plant Genetic Resource and Research Institute, Dr. Richard Adu Amoah revealed that the neglected and the under-utilized leafy vegetables are very nutritious and medicinal than the notable ones in the system.

He however used the opportunity and called on the government to help in the promotion of neglected, orphaned and underutilized leafy vegetables.

The Acting Director of the Plant Genetic Resource and Research Institute, Dr. Daniel Ashie Kotey said as the national genebank which is mandated to collect and preserve plant resources, they will ensure that most of the essential neglected plant crops are not extinct.

A photo-exhibition since the inception of the project was mounted as a poster at the event. In addition products such as seedlings, taro plants and corms were also exhibited. To further increase the diversity of taro germplasm in farmers’ fields, a total of 561 seedlings of nine taro varieties (8 exotic and one local) were distributed to 45 farmers. A participating farmer in the project, Mr. Napoleon Omari was adjudged the best taro farmer in the district.