Data being developed by the African Orphan Crop Consortium (AOCC) will be made publically available, helping to improve nutrition in Africa.

Seed Quest reports that the AOCC aims to sequence, assemble and annotate the genomes of 100 traditional African food crops. By making the genome sequences widely available, it hoped African and other scientists will be able to breed varieties of these species that are more nutritious, productive and robust.

The announcement was made by Mars Inc. Chief Agricultural Officer Howard, Yana Shapiro, during the G8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture held in partnership with World Bank Group in Washington.

Orphan crops are food crops and tree species that have largely been neglected by researchers because they are not economically important on the global market. In Africa, they include species such as African eggplant and potato, cocoyam and Ethiopian mustard.

Information generated through the AOCC will be shared with African researchers through the establishment of the African Plant Breeding Academy which will have facilities at the World Agroforestry Centre in Kenya and in West Africa at a site to be established. The academy will train plant breeding scientists and technicians on the application of genomic information and marker assisted selection for crop improvement.

Read the full story: Mars, Incorporated And Partners Confirm That Genome Data Of Africa's 'Orphan Crops' To Be Made Public