In many of the most malnourished regions of Africa, fruit consumption is among the lowest in the world. But efforts to domesticate nutrient-rich native trees have received little attention.

CIFOR Forests News quotes Ramni Jamnadass, head of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)’s Quality Trees Program, explaining how the unavailability and high cost of fruits is largely to blame for the widespread Vitamin C, A and mineral deficiencies in African countries.

“Hardly any formal domestication has been undertaken for highly nutritious indigenous species, despite the contribution of wild fruit trees to food security,” said Jamnadass, speaking at Tree Diversity Day on the sidelines of the 11th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biodiversity in Hyderabad, India.

For example, the fruits of the giant baobab tree have up to 20 times the Vitamin C of mango and 30 times the calcium but they are still not routinely consumed by many African adults.

The article further discusses the correlation between child health and tree cover.

One of the major challenges to growing fruit trees, indigenous or not, is having access to quality trees, knowledge about their management and improved harvesting and storage techniques.

According to Jamnadass, a well-coordinated tree domestication campaign should focus on tree species whose fruits, nuts, vegetables, and medicines have been harvested from forests over millennia but are now fast-disappearing, including baobab, tamarind, marula and chocolate berry.

Read the full story: A bit of baobab a day keeps the doctor away: wild fruits help solve Africa’s malnutrition crisis