By Cat Holmes
University of Georgia
Years of research have gone into America’s “amber waves of
grain.” Genetic advances are responsible for crop yields up to
five times higher than 50 years ago. But little has been
done for staple grains in developing countries.
As a result, some of the world’s poorest farmers grow the least
amount of grain. A University of Georgia researcher is out to
change that.
Katrien Devos, a UGA plant geneticist, is studying finger
millet, a staple crop in the East African countries of Uganda
and Kenya, as well as Southern India.
“The problem with these crops is that nobody has put the
resources into them,” Devos said.
“Any [research] work that is done will have a major impact on
the farmers in these countries,” she said. “These crops are
producing nowhere near their yield potential. There is a lot of
room for improvement.”
Devos recently received two grants to fund critical genetic
work to improve the yield of finger millet, a highly nutritious
grain that feeds millions of people.
For one project, funded by the McKnight Foundation, she’s
developing tools to be able to take advantage of the research
lavished on other crops, such as corn and rice.
Working with other researchers at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison and the University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, in
Bangalore, India, she will use information already gathered
about disease and drought resistence in other grains to
identify similar genes in finger millet.
“For example, a fungus called blast is a major problem for
finger millet,” she said. “A very similar fungus also effects
rice and has been extensively studied.”
Devos will look at whether the same regions that confer blast
resistance in rice correspond to the location of blast genes in
finger millet.
“Extrapolation from rice will help us understand the resistance
mechanism in finger millet,” she said.
Plants with improved blast resistance can then be bred with
varieties that farmers prefer to create hardier plants.
The second project will provide a rudimentary “library” of the
genetic markers scientists need to evaluate germ plasm and mine
various traits.
To put such a ‘library’ together, scientists must first survey
finer millet cultivars, landraces (old varieties that are
farmer-selected in areas where local subsistence agriculture
has long prevailed) and wild relatives.
Substantial finger millet collections are held in the USDA’s
Plant Genetic Resources Conservation Unit at UGA’s Griffin,
Ga.,campus and in Kenya and Ethiopia. But little study has been
made of these materials.
This project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International
Development, is a pilot study that will allow scientists to
make a beginning. Devos is working with other scientists in
Kenya and Uganda on the project.
The information will allow scientists to both improve finger
millet crops and integrate finger millet into the cereal
comparative genetics community, she said.
“Research on ‘orphan’ crops lacks the glamour of the human
genome project so it has been largely neglected by the research
community. There’s been a lack of funding,” Devos said.
“The beauty of researching finger millet,” she said, “is that
we can make a real difference to the rural poor and subsistence
farmers who rely on this crop for their daily food. We’re
making a start, but more efforts and resources are needed.”
Cat Holmes is a news editor with the University of Georgia
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
