Skip to content

Healthy and Prosperous Africa through Nutritious Local African Crops and Trees

With the endorsement of the African Union, the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC) has the greater integration of orphan crops into African food systems at its heart. To support this, its goal is to sequence, assemble and annotate the genomes of 101 traditional African food crops, to facilitate their genetic improvement. Once genomes have been sequenced, AOCC explores genetic diversity in depth in a ‘germplasm’ panel of each crop.

Pillars of AOCC

Nutrition is at the core of the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC). The consortium is working to address malnutrition, especially hidden hunger, in Africa through nutritious local food crops. These crops, little researched to date, are known as ‘orphan crops’ (‘minor crops’, ‘underutilized plant species’ or ‘neglected crops’). Many of them are rich in vitamins, essential minerals and other micronutrients. AOCC aims to make these nutritious crops more productive and more profitable for African farmers to grow, and easier for African consumers to use, among other objectives.

Latest Publications