Growing Grass Roots
Cornell's Institute for Genomic Diversity fights hunger in sub-Saharan Africa
By Clare Ulrich
"What's the good of cutting-edge science if you don't help the people who need it?" asks Theresa Fulton, director of outreach for Cornell's Institute for Genomic Diversity (IGD).
IGD was established in 1998 to provide support toward solving problems that threaten biodiversity and global food security. Conceived by Steve Tanksley, Susan McCouch, and Ronnie Coffman, all in the Department of Plant Breeding, IGD's work in conservation, agriculture, and crop improvement are right in line with the university's land-grant tradition of service. Since its inception, more than 100 students and international visitors have learned to generate and analyze data for research and to use the latest technologies and techniques at the institute's campus facility.
"Cornell has always had this global vision and commitment to bring the best science to the neediest people of the world," says Steve Kresovich, professor of plant breeding and IGD director. "A lot of advances in genomics and bioinformatics on this campus are being applied to human health, nutrition, and environmental problems. We want to provide support and have an impact where people are really limited by lack of access to resources or information."
Mali is such a place. Once the wealthiest and most powerful state in western sub-Saharan Africa (circa 1240-1500), it is now one of the five poorest countries in the world. Twice the size of Texas and landlocked, much of the country has no running water, power, or gas. Wood or charcoal is used for cooking. Animals are a primary mode of transportation.
More than 75 percent of Mali's 10 million people farm or herd. Decades of drought during the 1970s and 1980s depleted the country's meager water supply, killing thousands of people along with crops and livestock; Mali never entirely recovered. The encroaching Sahara desert covers the northern half of the country, perpetuating cycles of drought and famine that contribute to rampant malnutrition, the second-highest infant mortality rate in the world, and a life expectancy of 47 years.
Last October, Theresa Fulton and Rebecca Nelson, associate professor of plant pathology, began working with researchers and farmers in Bamako, Mali, to improve the region's chief staple crop, millet. A tall grass that looks a bit like corn, millet is typically used for feed or birdseed in the United States. In Mali, it's a fundamental part of every meal, softened and cooked into porridge or ground into flour for baking. Every bit of the 15-foot-tall plant is used in some way.
But Bamako gets only about three to five months of rain a year, during which time millet must be sowed as well as harvested. And rainfall is erratic. Farmers may sow seeds, but if it doesn't rain, they have to resow. If it rains early, they must plant immediately. The food supply is often at risk and always uncertain.
"When there's no rainfall and the millet supply has dwindled," explains Kresovich, "Malians pull berries off bushes and trees or dig up tubers. So it's important for them to make sure their millet supply will last throughout the year."
This is where IGD can help. Fulton, Nelson, and Kresovich, together with collaborators from the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), The Rockefeller Foundation, and others, organized a four-day workshop in Bamako to meet with an international group of scientists, educators, and students. The group reviewed current progress in millet improvement, discussed genomic discoveries using comparative genetic studies of grasses and grains, and considered areas to link advances in basic biology with crop improvement. The IGD team, including graduate student Randy Wisser, arrived early to become familiar with Mali, its agriculture, and customs and to talk to villagers about what they liked and didn't like about their millet crop. "Talking to people is important because there's no point in developing a new variety if it's something no one will like," says Fulton. Achieving high beta-carotene content, for example, could add a yellow hue to the grain, which is normally white or gray. If people have never seen deep yellow millet, they may not want to eat it. Or in gaining other nutritional value, the texture of the cooked grain may be altered beyond appeal. Even though millet is central to Malians' health, it's not their crop of choice. Villagers questioned the IGD team about corn and sorghum because these are crops they would like to grow. IGD's research on other grains, like maize and sorghum, provides insight into millet improvement just as research on millet in Mali will contribute to knowledge of other staple crops around the world. One day a variety of corn could be developed that would thrive in harsh climates like Mali's.
"Genetic discoveries in one organism can lead to discoveries in other organisms," says Fulton. (This is called comparative genomics.) "Our objective in Mali is to enable the best product to come out of the growers' fields for that critical three- to five-month period."
That's why Kresovich refers to IGD as a support group. "We're not synthesizing genes in a lab just to turn out a new variety of millet," he explains. "We're trying to help the Malian people put the building blocks together to build a better variety themselves. Our work involves discovering, characterizing, conserving, and using a broad range of millet genes, particularly those associated with nutrition or stress resistance, to understand this plant better so that we can provide the Malian people with the varieties they can best use. We're creating a biological menu for their breeders, so to speak."
This summer Sokona Dagnoka will arrive from Mali to begin her doctoral studies at Cornell. Plant breeding, population genetics, statistics, and genomics are specializations she'll consider. Kresovich will be one of her advisors, along with Margaret Smith, a professor in the Department of Plant Breeding. After earning her degree, Dagnoka plans to return to Mali to apply what she's learned. When she does, she becomes a vital part of the broader IGD scientific network to improve global efforts in conserving and using plant genetic resources in areas of the greatest need.