When Cyclone Idai swept away vital crop seed, genebanks came to the rescue
🟡Let’s stick to indigenous seed and shun GMOs
🟡Small grains are key
The head of the Sadc Genebank, Dr Justify Shava (right), accompanies journalist and Bertha Challenge Fellow Brezh Malaba on a tour of the Icrisat Regional Genebank in Matobo, near Bulawayo.
WHEN Cyclones ldai and Kenneth made landfall in southern Africa in March and April 2019 respectively, the consequences were devastating for farmers, who lost local seed reserves including crop wild relatives and crops ready for harvest.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation, an agency of the United Nations, reported that the cyclones and attendant floods affected more than 3.8 million people in the region and destroyed nearly 800 000 hectares of standing crops in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Heavy rains, floods and landslides destroyed crop fields, granaries and forests, all of which were important reserves of local seeds. The severe loss of these seed reserves meant that affected communities had less food to eat, farm, exchange and sell, impacting people’s food and nutrition security and livelihoods — with long-
term effects.
As the affected countries scrambled for solutions to the food security catastrophe caused by Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, the crop genebanks — also known as seed banks — rose to the challenge by collaborating with farmers in supplying the affected communities with much-needed seed for food crops.
Small grains breakthrough
One of the secret weapons in the drive for food security has been hiding in plain sight: small grains. Millet and sorghum not only offer a superior value proposition from a nutrition standpoint but are also more resilient to floods and droughts.
In a scientific breakthrough which marks a major milestone in the quest for food security, the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat) in December 2024 released Zimbabwe’s first-ever millet and sorghum hybrids. The hybrids, PMH 1 and PMH 2, are pearl millet varieties, and SH1 and SH2 are sorghum varieties. These hybrids are the outcome of a collaboration between Icrisat and the government of Zimbabwe’s Crop Breeding Institute.
The hybrids are designed to thrive in Zimbabwe’s semi-arid conditions and are more productive than the older open-pollinated varieties that farmers typically use. They are also drought tolerant and can be used for food production, animal feed, and industrial purposes like brewing.
Crop scientists are notching up tremendous achievements through fieldwork, collaborations and genebanks. Genebanks — also known as seed banks or germ plasm banks — are important for biodiversity conservation and crop improvement. They ensure that genetic materials are safely preserved and available for people to use. The seeds are catalogued, conserved for the long term, and made available to scientists for breeding more nutritious, productive and resilient varieties.
Genebanks crucial to food security
Food For Thought founder and Bertha Challenge Fellow Brezh Malaba toured the Icrisat Regional Genebank in Matobo, Zimbabwe.
Shava (left) shares notes with Icrisat research technician Tanyaradzwa Tenesi (right) during a tour of the Matobo Regional Genebank.
Tanyaradzwa Tenesi, a research technician at Icrisat, said seed can be stored for up to 50 years in the genebank. The Matobo Genebank serves East and southern Africa. There are 10 600 accessions [crop samples] in the gene bank and 2 018 accessions in the field.
We were accompanied on tour by Dr Justify Shava, the head of the Lusaka-based Sadc Plant Genetic Resources Centre (Sadc Genebank). Established in 1984, the genebank is located at Matobo Research Station, on the outskirts of Bulawayo. Shava — who has a technical background as a plant breeder and agriculturalist — is no stranger to plant genetics, having previously developed eight flue-cured tobacco varieties for Zimbabwe’s Tobacco Research Board.
The Sadc Genebank now has more than 63 000 plant accessions from the southern Africa region. These strategic crops form the core sources of food for the people of Sadc. Duplicates of these crop samples are stored at both the regional genebank in Zambia and at Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago near the North Pole.
We spoke to Dr Shava and these are the excerpts of the interview:
Question (Q): What work are you doing as the Sadc Genebank and what are your envisaged outcomes?
Answer (A): We’re the Sadc Genebank, we’re known as the Sadc Plant Genetic Resources Centre (SPGRC) and our role is to co-ordinate and promote the conservation of plant genetic resources in the Sadc region. We’re targeting crop species that are indigenous to southern Africa. We keep things like maize and small grains — the sorghum, the millet.
Q: Looking specifically at small grains, what is being done to promote their cultivation?
A: We’re promoting their adoption as the core of food security for the region. Apart from that promotion in the member states — that works through the national programmes — we also keep material at the regional genebank, SPGRC. We work as a duplicate of all the [plant genetic] material that is found in the Sadc member states. In addition, we also duplicate same material to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Q: Can farmers in the Sadc region access this genetic plant material from the Sadc Genebank?
A: Yes, they access the material. The arrangement is that whoever wants the material, if they contact us, because we don’t keep large quantities of that material, we refer them to the member states from which that material would have been collected. We work very closely with member states; we don’t work as an independent centre but as part and parcel of the network.
Q: When was the Sadc Genebank established?
A: The Sadc Plant Genetic Resources Centre was founded in 1989. We’ve been operating since 1989.
Q: That’s a long time. Do you think you’re making an impact as an institution?
A: We’re doing quite a lot to support the region. One recent project that we did was actually to co-ordinate the repatriation of material to Zimbabwe, to Mozambique, to Malawi, after the damage that had been done by Cyclone Idai. So, under those circumstances that’s when we become very active in support of the region.
Q: What are the drawbacks you’re facing in efforts to promote small grains? Am I correct when I observe that most people in this part of the world prefer maize as a staple, even though millet and sorghum are clearly superior from a nutritional and climate resilience perspective?
A: It looks like there’s some influence that is coming from what I would call the westernisation of our lifestyles. It looks like most people, especially the young generation, they think that it’s kinda backward to be eating small grains. But I tell you, the small grains actually are the most nutritious type of food that any human being can be eating, especially in southern Africa, given that it’s widely available. And we’re now talking of challenges of health issues that are to do with obesity; we’re promoting those small grains as they help people to survive those challenges.
Q: Food consumption behaviour is difficult to change?
A: The main reason why people are not eating the small grains is because some people think this food is quite inferior.
Q: Is it due to a lack of awareness?
A: Yes, lack of awareness.
Q: Is the Sadc region serious about coming up with policies to incentivise the production of small grains?
A: I would say that we’re not doing much, especially in those parts of our region that are not that dry. If you go to areas that are dry — you talk of Namibia, you talk of Botswana — they’re doing quite well in promoting these small grains. But as for the other parts of our region, I must admit that not much is being done.
Q: What more can be done, from a policy perspective, to promote the cultivation of millet and sorghum?
A: What I’m seeing is that the governments are already doing a lot, in terms of coming up with the policies. I think there are already some policies that are promoting small grains. I think we know that our countries are divided into different regions, based on the availability of moisture or rainfall. And there are already some policies that are promoting the growing of some of those small grains.
Q: Where is the problem then?
A: The biggest challenge is that there’s no awareness promotion that is in full motion. We’re seeing it happening, for example in 2023 there was talk of the International Year of Millets, and we were seeing a lot of governments in the region — Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi — coming up with events that talk about small grains. These events are supposed to be enhanced by a lot of other programmes that talk of the various initiatives that our governments are coming up with to ensure that small grains are adopted and are eaten with confidence. So, that’s what is needed, otherwise the policy framework is already there.
Q: Are Sadc countries doing enough, from a technical farming perspective, to provide support to farmers? In Zimbabwe, for instance, there has been brain drain which has affected the capacity of Agritex, for example, to provide agricultural technical extension advice to farmers.
A: The governments have been doing quite a lot in terms of investing in technical education in the area of agriculture. We have a lot of vocational training centres, we have a lot of technical colleges, agricultural colleges, universities. The training process is continuous and we have quite a number of experts who are roaming around in our countries. The challenge is practicality. We have trained these people, most of them are theoretical, they’re not hands-on. And I think that’s what is needed. As we move around across our region, we’re seeing that our governments are coming up, again, with various initiatives that take these researchers to the communities. I have heard rumours that were talking of some initiative in Zimbabwe under which academics or lecturers are supposed to go and partner with the farmers in the field. I think such an initiative would be noble; it will ensure that we don’t just have people who can cram words but those who can go on the ground and produce results.
Q: The use of toxic agrochemicals is on the increase and this has implications for human health and soil health. How do we make agriculture sustainable?
A: That’s the global drive that is being talked about these days, ensuring that we produce whatever we produce in agriculture without harming the environment. We have to ensure that we balance whatever we’re putting in the environment such that it doesn’t harm the environment. We talk of initiatives that include organic agriculture, where we use various ways of managing pests such as crop rotation. We can even talk of combined agricultural systems where the forces of nature are at play when it comes to controlling different diseases and pests — and not just spraying chemicals all the time. We have a number of crop species that can actually work synergistically to ensure that we reduce the concentration of pests and diseases while at the same time balancing the yields that we get to support our communities. As the Sadc Plant Genetic Resources Centre, we also promote the use of indigenous crop species in our agriculture.
Q: On that topic, are genetically modified organism (GMO) crops a big issue in this part of the world? How do we preserve our indigenous gene pool from contamination?
A: The policy that we have in most Sadc countries is that we do not promote the growing of genetically modified organisms. We’re keeping the materials that we’re keeping as pure as they are., as indigenous as they are. We still think that we still have a leeway in improving our agronomy to ensure that we have high yields by not necessarily going for the genetically modified organisms. So, for now, we’re saying that it’s not the time to talk much about genetically modified organisms.
Q: But some, in South Africa for instance, are arguing that by using GMO maize seed and chemical fertilisers, the crop yield is boosted and food security improves.
A: The best, for now, is to look at our normal, ordinary varieties and make sure that we do the agronomy appropriately to ensure that we get the yields that we’re supposed to be getting. We already have varieties that can give us 20 tonnes per hectare [of maize]. If we grow them well, we can feed our nations. Do we really need the controversial genetically modified organisms? I think for now we can say we don’t need the genetically modified organisms. We can do with our conventionally bred varieties if we give them the necessary crop management conditions.
