A professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Prof. Cyril Nwangburuka, has called for the rescue of indigenous African vegetable crops, in view of their nutritional and medicinal values.
He made the call while delivering the 40th Babcock University inaugural lecture recently.
In his paper, Genetics Improvement of African Indigenous Vegetable Crops (AIVCS): A Panacea to Food Security, Sustainable Health and Poverty Alleviation in Nigeria, Nwangburuka called on government and private sector players to intensify efforts through research to prevent further genetic erosion and extinction of the AIVCs.
He said institutions such as the National Centre for Genetic Resources should be well funded, being a national centre for collection and preservation of genetic resources.
Nwangburuka also expressed concern over the abandonment of indigenous vegetable crops such as Talinum traingulare (water leaf), Vernonia amygdalina (bitter leaf), solanum anguivi (Anara), piper guinensis (Uziza) for exotic improved vegetable crop varieties such as kale, celery, cabbage, cucumber and lettuce.
He said it was regrettable that most of the indigenous vegetable crops were hardly found on the shelves of vegetable sellers and, when they are available, they are considered inferior and oftentimes command less cash value. This, according to him, discourages the few sellers of the AIVCs and makes them unpopular.
In view of this, Nwangburuka said there was a need to enhance AIVCs’ innate potential via crop improvement to achieve their capacity for food security, sustainable health and poverty eradication
He stated that the AIVCs were in a position to provide huge underutilized natural food resources, which could conveniently complement the food system, if molecular and morphological tools are available for their genetic improvement.
The BU don added that the AIVCs remained the panacea for poverty alleviation in Nigeria if their huge diversities were urgently harnessed.
He also called on the government to provide incentives to growers of the AIV crops to guarantee sustainable production and thus ensure food security.
According to him, the collaboration between the indigenous communities and the conventional plant scientists would produce a synergistic outcome and significantly address health issues in African communities using AIVCs.