Reducing tuber crop losses in Africa and Asia

Around 700 million people in Africa and Asia rely on yams and cassava for food and income. But harvesting these staple crops isn’t easy: losses during harvesting and processing are exceptionally high, at 60% for yams and 30% for cassava.

Gratitude, an EU-funded research project, aims to reduce waste and losses during harvesting and processing. Led by Keith Tomlins, a researcher at the University of Greenwich’s Natural Resources Institute, the project aims to increase staple crop yields in Vietnam, Thailand, Ghana and Nigeria.

“Cassava is very perishable and has to be used a couple of days after harvesting,” Tomlins said. “The whole marketing chain is heavily reliant on the fresh crop being rapidly transported from farm to market, without any delays, otherwise we end up with quite substantial losses.

“One [way to reduce losses] is simply to reduce the physical losses; they can be quite high because we deal mainly with fresh yam storage. Therefore we are looking for the varieties that are better at maintaining dormancy: you want to keep the yam plants asleep for as long as possible.

“We are also looking at what is called curing, a process where the root actually can heal when it is subjected to any injuries during storage. We do this by controlling the temperature and humidity during the first few days of storage.

“We have also been looking at the cassava value chains. And we found that there is a difference between the Asian and African markets. The African crops are mainly used as food while in Vietnam and Thailand the cassava is either used as animal feed or converted into starch and the starch is turned into syrups.”

Tomlins’ team is looking into ways to utilise cassava waste products, particularly the peels and discarded roots. One possibility is to turn it into animal feed for goats; another is to use it to grow mushrooms.

“In Asia, we are looking at developing new products within the system, such as snack foods produced from the spent waste,” Tomlins said.

“It looks like we can make the biggest impact in Ghana and Nigeria, because those systems are less efficient than those in the Asian markets. We are encouraging what we would describe as ‘self-self interactions’. So we have partners from Thailand and Vietnam to come and visit partners in Nigeria and Ghana, and the other way around.

“They share ideas and technology and, hopefully as these partnerships develop, the teams will continue to maintain these relationships and work together.”

Source: www.youris.com.