Biotechnology used to improve Ethiopia's tef

Covering more than 2.6 million hectares, tef (Eragrostis tef) is Ethiopia's main cereal crop. With a higher tolerance to extreme conditions such as drought, water-logging and pests and diseases compared to wheat and maize, tef is favoured by millions of Ethiopian smallholder farmers. The seeds are also high in fibre, iron, and protein, and free of gluten, a substance in wheat that people suffering from coeliac disease are allergic to. But compared to other major cereals tef produces very low yields.

The major constraint of tef is a weakness of the stem which causes the plant to fall. A permanent displacement of the stem from the upright position, or lodging, results in considerable harvest losses, reducing both the quality and quantity of harvested grain. The use of nitrogen fertilisers, which weakens the stem further, and mechanised harvesting are also hindered.

To increase the productivity of tef, a group of scientists from the Institute of Plant Science based at the University of Bern in Switzerland have teamed up with the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture and Syngenta Switzerland to develop semi-dwarf varieties that will be resistant to lodging and respond to the application of fertiliser.

Although tef is adapted to extreme environmental conditions, it has essentially been neglected by the scientific community. As a result this underutilised species ('orphan crop'), has remained largely unimproved. In order to genetically improve tef and produce semi-dwarf varieties, the Tef Biotechnology Project is using the latest biotechnological methods, such as TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions in Genomes).

TILLING is able to identify genes responsible for specific traits, such as plant height, and importantly does not require prior knowledge of the genome sequence. As a result, this technology has enabled scientists to isolate particular genes, identify individual lines with useful mutations, and evaluate their genetic traits. Over 6,000 mutated tef selections are currently being screened for two genes known to influence plant height in related crop species using this method.

In addition to funding from the Syngenta Foundation, the Tef Biotechnology Project also has access to Syngenta's greenhouse facilities in Switzerland, free of charge. "We are able to identify semi-dwarf lines in these modern greenhouses where environmental conditions such as light, temperature and humidity are properly regulated," Dr. Zerihun Tadele, the tef project leader reveals. So far, 6-8 plants have been grown from over 4,000 mutagenised lines, of which ten had inherited the semi-dwarf trait.

"This public-private partnership is very important," Dr Tadele adds. "Private companies, like Syngenta, have a lot of expertise and equipment which are not available in public organisations in developing countries. Our partnership with Syngenta has brought a lot of benefits to the project."

In 2009, seeds from the first set of promising semi-dwarf candidate lines were sent to the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research to be tested in the field and crossed with local cultivars. Seeds from another two will be sent in 2010. Although the semi-dwarf varieties have not yet been released, Dr. Tadele is optimistic that semi-dwarf lines will reach smallholder farmers and significantly increase their yields.

"Most of the tef lines have a weak stem, but the new lines have a special architecture so it doesn't fall," he explains. "If we can prevent lodging, we will increase production by at least two-fold." Once approved, it is the aim of the project to establish sustainable mechanisms, involving local and national organisations, to produce and distribute the seeds.

Scientists working to improve tef, and other orphan crops, face a lack of genetic information. As a result, after a pilot project in 2009, Dr Tadele and his colleagues launched the Tef Genome Sequencing Project in 2010, with funding from the Syngenta Foundation. While the Functional Genomics Center in Zurich has begun sequencing, the work will be completed at BecA (Biosciences in Eastern and Central Africa), based in Nairobi, as part of the projects strategy to transfer knowledge and technology to Africa.



Semi-dwarf lines (left) have a much stronger stem than traditional varieties (right) credit: Moritz Jöst

"Sequencing does not just have an academic purpose; we want to apply it also," Tadele states. "Many times we had problems identifying and isolating genes using the TILLING technology, but when we have the genome sequence we can easily isolate the gene."

In addition, tef is a hardy plant, and sequencing the genome could reveal why tef has a higher tolerance than other major crops to drought, water-logging and pests and diseases. When complete, the genome sequence will be made freely available for public use so that it can be used by scientists to identify traits that will directly benefit African farmers.

"I strongly believe that orphan crops, including tef, can alleviate hunger in Africa provided they get proper attention in terms of research and development," Dr Tadele concludes. "But acquiring funding, particularly for an orphan crop, was the main challenge we faced. By partnering with the Syngenta Foundation and the University of Bern our project has enjoyed the use of high-tech techniques in order to improve tef, a disadvantaged crop of Africa in terms of research."

New Agriculturalist

Kansas farmers attempt to grow an Ethiopian grain, teff

by Scott Canon

A new “it” grain is blooming in the fields of northwest Kansas.

Teff has a ready-made market of Ethiopian expatriates hungering for a taste of home with virtually no supply of the grain for their beloved injera bread. Teff packs more protein per pound than wheat. And because it produces gluten-free flour, it could open a buffet line of breads and pastas to people with celiac disease.

It also can withstand drought and floods and, so far, it hasn’t fallen prey to pests that bedevil other Midwestern crops.

Ethiopians have long adored the grain, raising it by hand in their highlands and making it the country’s staple cereal.

“People will definitely buy it,” said 52-year-old Gillan Alexander, a Graham County farmer who is among those experimenting with a crop that is ancient in Africa but new to Kansas.

But can America reap its harvest?

Size, it turns out, matters. A grain of teff is only slightly larger than the period at the end of this sentence. Walk through a field that Gary Alexander — a cousin of Gillan’s — has planted in wheat, and all the challenges of mechanizing teff production begin to show.

Start with the ground. Squint closely enough and you see that some of the tiny reddish seeds have fallen to the dirt, lost for any chance of harvest. In fact, the word “teff” translates to “loss” in the Ethiopian language of Amarigna.

The grass has begun to shed its seeds partly because the plants have matured at dramatically different rates. Some are bright green shoots just starting out, while others are browning in retreat.

No sooner does it reach maturity than the soft stem bends over. Modern farmers call it lodging, and they don’t like it. They prefer crops with good posture that stand up for vacuum-like harvest machinery.

Teff has proved all the more troublesome because even at full growth, it can vary in height by a foot or more. When teff is harvested, far too much chaff ends up with the Lilliputian grain.

“You can tell how the Ethiopians get the seed by whacking at this stuff by hand,” 62-year-old Gary Alexander said. “I don’t think my hands will last that long.”

He has pieced together two-by-fours and window screen to devise a sieve, and it works well enough. So it’s possible, but not yet practical, to harvest teff commercially.

Ethiopian farming of teff only supports a national per capita income of $800 a year. To make the payments on Kansas farmland, to cover the cost of 21st-century farm equipment and to leave a little profit at the end will require something more efficient.

“So far, it’s been too labor-intensive,” said Josh Coltrain of Cloud County Community College.

Coltrain has been hired by the Kansas Black Farmers Association to oversee a project paid for by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to determine whether teff has potential in America’s breadbasket.

Just a few hundred acres have been planted so far, scattered among several farmers in an area where one person sometimes tends more than 1,000 acres. Grants issued through the Solomon Valley Resource Conservation Development Area since the test plots were first planted in 2005 add up to less than $200,000.

The grain’s promise, Coltrain said, doesn’t come in its yields. Farmers can get perhaps three times as many bushels per acre from wheat. But the premium paid for teff — at a few health food stores and groceries that cater to African immigrants and to Ethiopian restaurants — could quickly make up for the smaller bounty.

“I get calls all the time from people wanting to buy it from us, mainly for Ethiopian restaurants and bakeries,” he said. “I have to tell them we haven’t got everything figured out yet.”

Coltrain thinks it ultimately will be a good Great Plains crop. It can withstand wild weather springs, and in many ways the dry spells common to western Kansas are similar to those in Ethiopia. The trick, he said, will be cross-breeding varieties that bring more uniformity to the plants and increase the amount of grain a teff plant produces.

Teff’s cultivation dates at least to the 13th century B.C., and the grain today hasn’t changed much. By comparison, wheat, sorghum, corn and the other grains popular in this part of the world are finely tuned, sometimes genetically modified hybrids.

In the meantime, farmers and agricultural economists say teff looks worthwhile as a forage crop — cut for hay without bothering to harvest the seed.

“That’s a decent fallback,” said Bruce Anderson, a professor of agronomy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Teff tends to grow quickly enough to cut up to four times in a year and pack into bales. And for Kansas fields planted in fall for winter wheat, plant scientists said it makes a good rotation crop.

What’s more, the softer leaves and stems make it ideal for pampered livestock such as alpacas or llamas that sometimes have difficulty digesting hay, or end up with bloody snouts from eating rougher products.

“I call it cotton candy for horses,” Gary Alexander said. “They just love it.”

The push to bring the grain to Kansas began with Edgar Hicks, an official at the Nebraska State Grange who works with minority farmers. He hopes Nicodemus will be to American teff what the Champagne region of France is to sparkling wine.

“There’s a chance to get hold of something and see it take off,” Hicks said.

In pushing for grants to explore the possibilities, he suggested a cultural connection between the Africans of Ethiopia who grow and consume teff and the African-Americans in Kansas who would feed a U.S. market.

Nicodemus is the last surviving town founded by Exodusters, former slaves who came to the state in the 1870s and 1880s.

Gillan Alexander, though, said he doesn’t feel any particular connection to the Ethiopian staple.

“I’m just looking to make a living.”

KansasCity.com

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