Accelerated Diversification for Climate Resilient Agriculture (Characterise)

Project summary

This is workstream 1 of the Accelerated Diversification for Climate Resilient Agriculture (ADCRA) project (see workstream 2 here) where we're characterising edible plant species with the strongest adaptive potential to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa. As part of this work, we're building an open-access ranking system to identify priority species for research, improvement, and value chain support.

Subsequently, we launched conservation expeditions with the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership and in-country partners for the top 50 species. We will generate phenotypic and genomic data for those species to provide a springboard for their rapid uptake in global trials and breeding programmes.

Outputs

A climate-ready assessment and domestication index for known edible plant species.
A seed collection of 50 underutilized climate-ready food species
Genetic characterization of 50 climate-ready species
Phenotypic characterization of 50 climate-ready species

Project team

Workstream Lead

Rafal Gutaker, Senior Research Leader

Project coordinator

Georja Said

Deliverable 1: Sam Pironon, Felix Lim, Ian Ondo
Deliverable 2: Elena Castillo-Lorenzo, Eva Martens
Deliverable 3: Rafal Gutaker, Amy Jackson
Deliverable 4: Elena Castillo-Lorenz, Filippo

Partners Collaborators

Sam Pironon, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Karim Gharbi, Earlham Institute, UK
Ministry of Green Economy & Environment, Forestry Research Department, Zambia
South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), South Africa
Instituto de Investigação Agrária de Moçambique (IIAM), Mozambique

Publications

S. Pironon (...) J. K. Willis 2024.

The Calleva Foundation

Accelerated Diversification for Climate Resilient Agriculture (Characterise)

Workstream Lead

Project coordinator

The global distribution of plants used by humans.

‘Domesticability’: were some species predisposed for domestication?

Adaptation and the Geographic Spread of Crop Species.