Ethiopian researcher investigates dwarf varieties of tef

Tef (Eragrostis tef) is Ethiopia's main cereal crop, covering more than one million hectares of land. Its advantages are numerous, such as its capacity to tolerate both drought and water logging. Its seeds are rich in proteins and amino acids and can be also stored for long time without being attacked by pests. Furthermore, tef does not contain gluten, which is a desirable trait for those allergic to it in wheat.

However, tef's yields leave much to be desired. The plants are often victims of lodging, a weakness of the stem that causes the plant to fall, over resulting in considerable harvest losses, both in terms of quality and quantity. The FAO estimates the losses to be about 17%.

Zerihun Tadele, an Ethiopian researcher at the University of Bern, Switzerland, has been conducting research which he hopes will lead to the development of dwarf tef varieties that will be resistant to lodging, especially after fertiliser applications. With support from the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, Tadele is using a genetic technique called tilling to identify the genes responsible for the trait that one wishes to modify, which in this case is plant height. the technique has been successfully used on maize, wheat and barley.

A plant whose genome has been completely deciphered, such as rice, is used to obtain the gene controlling the desired characteristic. The corresponding gene is then searched for in the plant under study, in this case tef. After one year of research, Zerihun Tadele has already managed to produce candidate dwarf lines. However, it is still too early to know if they are capable of developing properly and producing fertile seeds, two conditions that are needed to arouse the farmers' interest. The final results concerning dwarf tef's performance are expected in June 2008.

Tef belongs to what are known as 'orphan crops,' which also includes a variety of millets, as well as some pea species (cow pea, grass pea, bambara groundnut), and roots (cassava, sweet potato). Even though they represent a vital source of income for millions of Africans and are part of their daily diet, these crops have generated little interest in the scientific community, which prefers to concentrate its efforts on wheat, maize or rice.


Oromia Times