The African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC) is an international effort to improve nutrition, productivity and climatic adaptability of some of Africa's most important food crops, thus helping to decrease malnutrition and stunting among the continent's most vulnerable population, especially rural children.

It was established to reduce stunting and malnutrition by providing nutritional security through improving locally adapted nutritious, but neglected, under-researched or orphan African food crops.

The AOCC has to-date achieved the following:

101 crops/trees have been identified for sequencing

Sequencing of 6 crops/tree is near completion

Sequence data has been produced for 60 crops

150 lead African scientists have been trained to breed high yield, nutritious and climate-resilient crop varieties for farmers.

Partnerships have been developed involving public, private and academia stakeholders

The AOCC is impacting food production systems from several spheres for Africa and the developing world in general as follows:

Orphan crops which have not benefitted from modern scientific and technological advancements are increasingly becoming of importance in contributing to food production systems and they are now being seen as "crops of the future";

The African Plan Breeders Academy is building a cadre of African breeders who are able to apply advanced genetic approaches and share genetic solutions in order to harness the genetic diversity of the continent for addressing the needs of African producers, processors and consumers;

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Consortium members

The African Orphan Crops Consortium includes:

The African Union Development Agency- NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD)

Mars, Incorporated

LGC (Plant sampling kits, DNA extraction and KASP genotyping chemistry)

World Agroforestry Centre

BGI (doing the initial sequencing)

Life Technologies Corporation (donor of sequencing equipment)

World Wildlife Fund

University of California, Davis

iPlant Collaborative (managing the data produced)

Biosciences eastern and central Africa - International Livestock Research Institute.

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American Voter: Sarita McCoy Gregory

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