Abstract
Main conclusionCrops For the Future (CFF), as an entity, has established a broad range of research activities to promote the improvement and adoption of currently underutilised crops.This paper summarises selected research activities at Crops For the Future (CFF) in pursuit of its mission ‘to develop solutions for diversifying future agriculture using underutilised crops’. CFF is a research company focussed on the improvement of underutilised crops, so that they might be grown and consumed more widely with benefits to human food and nutritional security; its founding guarantors were the Government of Malaysia and the University of Nottingham. From its base in Malaysia, it engages in research around the world with a focus on species and system diversification. CFF has adopted a food system approach that adds value by delivering prototype food, feed and knowledge products. Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea) was adopted as an exemplar crop around which to develop CFF’s food system approach with emphasis on the short-day photoperiod requirement for pod-filling and the hard-to-cook trait. Selective breeding has allowed the development of lines that are less susceptible to photoperiod but also provided a range of tools and approaches that are now being exploited in other crops such as winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus), amaranth (Amaranthus spp.), moringa (Moringa oleifera) and proso (Panicum miliaceum) and foxtail (Setaria italica) millets. CFF has developed and tested new food products and demonstrated that several crops can be used as feed for black soldier fly which can, in turn, be used to feed fish thereby reducing the need for fishmeal. Information about underutilised crops is widely dispersed; so, a major effort has been made to develop a knowledge base that can be interrogated and used to answer practical questions about potential exploitation of plant and nutritional characteristics. Future research will build on the success with Bambara groundnut and include topics such as urban agriculture, rural development and diversification, and the development of novel foods.
Highlights
The Research Centre of Crops For the Future (CFF), located at Seminyeh, Malaysia and comprising laboratories, offices and a field research centre, was launched in 2011 as the world’s only centre with an exclusive remit to work on underutilised crops
Funding for its research activities comes from its two funding guarantors and from competitive contracts obtained from a variety of sources including the UK Newton Fund, the EU, FAO and
The need for a Centre such as CFF arises for several reasons but not least because human food systems are currently dominated by four crops—rice, wheat, maize and soybean—of which the three cereals provide over 50% of plant-based human food (IPES-Food 2016)
Summary
CFF decided to work on a small number of crops using Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea) as a case study for developing improved genotypes from landraces and wild relatives and accommodating them into extant cropping and food systems (http://www.bamyield.org). The nutritional (and antinutritional), physical and chemical properties of the crop are being evaluated to understand better how to develop food products and food ingredients, to identify where markets could be developed or where there is the option for replacing a major crop ingredient with one from Bambara groundnut (Halimi et al 2019) These will depend on genotype and will certainly be influenced by the growing environment and soil; so, an assessment in the target environment for nutritional components and their stability is important. Consumer acceptance of the noodles was between neutral and moderate liking, except for the odour of noodles to which moringa leaf powder had been added which was mild dislike
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