Major Heretofore Intractable Biotic Constraints to African Food Security
CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by ICRISAT Open Access Repository ARTICLE IN PRESS Crop Protection 23 (2004) 661–689 Major heretofore intractable biotic constraints to African food security that may be amenable to novel biotechnological solutions Jonathan Gressela,*, Abdelhaq Hanafib, Graham Headc, Wally Marasasd,A. Babatunde Obilanae, James Ochandaf, Thouraya Souissig, George Tzotzosh a Department of Plant Sciences, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel b Department of Plant Protection, IAV Hassan II, Complexe Horticole d’Agadir, BP:12042, Cite Balneaire Agadir, Morocco c Monsanto LLC, 800 North Lindbergh Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63167, USA d PROMEC Unit, Medical Research Council, PO Box 19070, Tygerberg 7505, South Africa e ICRISAT Nairobi, PO Box 39063 Nairobi, Kenya f Department of Biochemistry, University of Nairobi, P. O. BOX 30197, Nairobi, Kenya g INAT. Lab. Botanique & Malherbologie, Tunisia h Ferrogasse 27, A-1180, Vienna, Austria Received 1 September 2003; received in revised form 9 October 2003; accepted 28 November 2003 Abstract The input costs of pesticides to control biotic constraints are often prohibitive to the subsistence farmers of Africa and seed based solutions to biotic stresses are more appropriate. Plant breeding has been highly successful in dealing with many pest problems in Africa, especially diseases, but is limited to the genes available within the crop genome. Years of breeding and studying cultural practices have not always been successful in alleviating many problems that biotechnology may be able to solve. We pinpoint the major intractable regional problems as: (1) weeds: parasitic weeds (Striga and Orobanche spp.) throughout Africa; grass weeds of wheat (Bromus and Lolium) intractable to herbicides in North Africa; (2) insect and diseases: stem borers and post-harvest grain weevils in sub-Saharan Africa; Bemesia tabaci (white fly) as the vector of the tomato leaf curl virus complex on vegetable crops in North Africa; and (3) the mycotoxins: fumonisins and aflatoxins in stored grains.
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