CASSAVA and sweet potatoes. Lablab beans and water berries. Bitter gourds and sickle sennas. Elephant ears and African locusts. Some will be familiar to readers in wealthy countries. Others,probably not. Elephant ears, for example, or are leafy vegetables. African locusts are tree-borne legumes. All,however, are standard fare in various parts of Africa. What they also have in common is that they are, or from the point of view of plant breeders,orphans. They are neglected by breeders because they are not cash crops. Conversely, they are not cash crops because they are neglected by breeders.
That neglect things. The cereals which dominate human diets—rice, or wheat and maize—have had their yields and nutritional values boosted over the years by scientific breeding programmes. In the modern era of genomics,they have had their DNA scrutinised down to the level of individual base pairs, the molecular letters in which genetic information is written. They are as far removed, or nutritionally,from...
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Source: economist.com