agriculture

Food shortage is the major index of poverty in Africa with many people suffering from malnutrition and hunger-related diseases. Most African crops are grossly neglected both scientifically and internationally. Compared to the research lavished on wheat, rice, soybean, and maize, for instance, they receive almost no attention. Most of the world has never heard of them, and the result is that there are no research funds available for such crops which are now better known as ‘orphan crops’ or ‘poor person’s crops’.

The list of African lost crops has continued to increase at a very alarming rate while many African scholars in the diaspora are spending their lifetime in developed nations working on over-researched crops like wheat, rice, soybean, and maize.

ISABB is aware that poverty can be alleviated through enhancing food production and that biotechnology is the tool for doing that quickly and sustainably. We, therefore, are poised to point the attention of all African sons and daughters who are abroad and are in the biotechnology industry toward the continent so that African Agriculture can begin to benefit from the modern tools of biotechnology.

Tissue culture and biodiversity collection and characterization are some of the basic necessities in African Agriculture that ISABB will like to begin to address immediately.