National Post (National Edition)
PLANTING NEW FOOD IDEAS
Ninety per cent of the world's diet comes from just 15 types of crops. But there's much more biodiversity we could — and should — access.
Chestnut brown, large and smooth, the multipurpose morama bean holds promise for the future of food. Native to the arid savannahs of southern Africa, it's well-adapted to harsh conditions. Widely eaten there, its flavour is reminiscent of cashew nuts when roasted. Cooks work with it in various forms: Milled into powder for porridges and drinks, or boiled with maize meal.
“From a single bean, you can obtain milk. You can obtain oil. And you can grind the bean and obtain flour, which can be really useful for baking. The potential of this plant is really incredible,” explains Tiziana Ulian, senior research leader in the Natural Capital and Plant Health department at England's Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. “(Its tubers) are full of water ... which is really good for the species to be able to grow in very dry environments, like in southern Africa in the Kalahari Desert.”
The morama bean is one of nearly 100 plant species Ulian and her team of researchers pinpointed as holding potential for “future-proofing” global food systems. Part of Kew's State of the World's Plants and Fungi 2020 report — a collaboration of 210 researchers in 42 countries — their paper, “Unlocking plant resources to support food security and promote sustainable agriculture,” was also published in the journal Plants, People, Planet.
Ninety per cent of the world's energy intake comes from only 15 crops; and more than half the people on the planet (upwards of four billion) rely on maize, rice and wheat as staples, according to the report. “This is really a very scary idea,” says Ulian. “We are relying on just these 15 plants while the biodiversity there is really wide.”
Kew scientists and collaborators identified 7,039 edible plant species in their research. “We keep discovering new plants every year,” adds Ulian, “so there is the potential that this number can grow more and more.”
Just 417 of these are currently considered food crops, the researchers found, leaving thousands of “overlooked and underutilized plants.” Some of these may have been grown in the past, but have fallen out of favour, others that are known locally but not globally, and uncultivated plants people collect from the wild. They may be neglected, Ulian underscores, but they are integral to safeguarding food security and achieving greater crop diversity.
“We shouldn't just focus on a small number of species,” she says. “Not just for conservation, but it will also help our health and our food security for future generations.”
Ulian, who's based at the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) in rural Sussex, England, stresses the need for a joint political and economic effort to provide the possibility for further research into cultivating these plants for the future.
The MSB is a subterranean collection of more than 2.4 billion seeds — making it the world's largest cache of seeds from wild plants. “We carry out the research to look at the germination requirements — how to propagate (them) — and how to unlock their use,” she says. “Our research efforts are into understanding the diversity of wild species out there that can feed the world.”
For their work on the morama bean, the MSB has been collecting seeds with the help of a collaborator in Botswana. They're not solely looking into the germination requirements, which help you propagate the plant, Ulian stresses, but also investigating potential products that can be obtained from the species. After they compiled the list of edible plants for their report, the researchers came up with the nearly 100 “future foods” — using their collective experience rather than an algorithm to select species from all over the world.
They highlighted five of these roughly 100 edible plants for the report: the aforementioned morama bean; akkoub, which is eaten as a vegetable in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East — fried with olive oil and garlic, pickled, or folded into omelettes; fonio, a wild grass species that grows in West Africa, which “is a potential staple food” high in iron, calcium and several essential amino acids; pandanus, a drought-resistant coastal tree that grows from Hawaii to the Philippines, and produces fruit and leaves with a variety of uses; and chaya, a shrub with “highly nutritious” leaves and shoots native to Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.
Humanity faces a double challenge, Ulian emphasizes: food insecurity and obesity. “Future foods” need to be able to withstand climate change, but also have to be nutritious. “When we talk about food security, it's not only about quantity but also it's the quality of the food,” she adds.
In their study, the researchers looked at the edible plants' other uses: 70 per cent are also medicinal; nearly 60 per cent can be used for materials (e.g., in construction); and 40 per cent have environmental uses (e.g., enrich the soil).
The baobab, “an iconic, charismatic plant,” found in Madagascar, northwestern Australia and various parts of the African continent, epitomizes the versatility researchers were looking for. The tall, “upside-down” trees provide shade, giving them immense social significance: “There is an emotional connection to the baobab.”
It also presents a multitude of medicinal, material and edible uses: The fruit and seeds are local foods; the white pulp treats fevers and diarrhea; and the bark is used to make clothes, paper and rope. The rich local traditions associated with these potential crops, Ulian stresses, should be recognized as we look to their future uses as global food.
“Biodiversity is essential to food security and nutrition. Not only at the local level but at the global level. And it's important to get to know and use this biodiversity — this diversity of edible plants and edible fungi. But we also shouldn't forget the wealth of traditional knowledge about their uses and practices,” says Ulian. “I think it's important to have a holistic view. By using this diversity, we can have a sustainable agriculture and at the same time, help protect the environment to deliver its ecosystem services. Because it's not just the food.”
From a single bean, you can obtain milk. You can obtain oil. And you can grind the bean and obtain flour, which can be really useful
for baking.