At the moment, the vast majority of agriculture is based on a handful of crops. But as climate change takes hold, it is time to spotlight alternatives that can better withstand a warmer and drier future. Such as quinoa and breadfruit.
Imagine. You drive your car on a provincial road with arable land on both sides. However, that country is not full of the well-known potatoes, onions or corn, but with a photogenic mix of waving pink and yellow plumes: quinoa.
Indeed: the trendy seeds from South America, which we still mainly encounter in pre-packed salads or in boxes in the supermarket. Who knows, maybe this crop will one day save the farmer, like the current one cash crops – the crops that bring in money – are failing due to the increasingly drier and saltier soil.
In the meantime, scientists and aid organizations in the tropics are putting another crop on the map as widely as possible: the breadfruit tree. Because according to recent research, it should still be doing very well at the end of this century, if other harvests start to disappoint due to climate change.
Droughts in agriculture
But back to the Low Countries. These have been hit by a number of major droughts in the past five years, and they are expected to become more frequent in the coming decades. Onion cultivation, for example, has suffered considerably. Robert van Loo, plant breeding researcher at Wageningen University & Research. “There comes a point where, as a farmer, you start thinking: can I continue to grow potatoes or onions?”
Now there are also crops that are better able to withstand the changing conditions. Such as the aforementioned quinoa, which is now grown on a small scale in fields. Firstly, these plants can withstand drought well. “They have very broad and deep roots,” says Van Loo. “This means they can last longer when the next rain shower is delayed.”
Secondly, quinoa plants are rarely affected by salinization – a big plus in, for example, the lower parts of the Netherlands, where the soil is becoming increasingly salty. Third, quinoa grows quickly. Also useful, because due to climate change the water in the soil runs out faster or becomes too hot shortly after sowing. As a result, a crop that needs a long time to ripen will eventually run into problems.
Making meat substitutes from quinoa
Furthermore, in terms of nutritional value, quinoa can more than compete with the crops that are currently most commonly grown. “The seeds have a very varied composition,” says Van Loo, who puts them on the table at home about once a week. “It contains carbohydrates, but also quite a lot of proteins: up to 15 percent. This means you can make meat substitutes from it. Moreover, they contain many essential amino acids and no gluten.”
In the tropics, many eyes are now focused on the breadfruit tree, which can grow up to 30 meters high and produces fruit the size of a football. Originally from New Guinea, this tree spread – mainly due to humans – over large parts of Oceania, South and Central America, and the tropical parts of Asia. And it doesn’t have to stop there. The tree should also thrive in the Sahel and Central Africa, for example.
“One advantage of the breadfruit tree,” says Daniel Horton, a climate scientist at Northwestern University in the US state of Illinois, “is that you can grow other crops under it that don’t do well in full sun, such as coffee.” Breadfruit is also very versatile: you can stew, steam, boil, bake, grill, use in salads and make both savory snacks and sweet desserts.
Making flour from breadfruit
On the other hand, they do not have a very long shelf life. “They don’t last long as fruits and are difficult to transport,” says Horton. “That is why we are now working on ways to process them into shelf-stable products. For example, you can make flour from it. You can then use it when you need it, instead of having to eat a breadfruit immediately when it is ripe.”
Above all, the breadfruit tree is a very reliable supplier of food. Not only because it produces a lot of fruit for thirty to fifty years, but also because it can survive a drought of a few months and is highly resistant to hurricanes. “There are cultures where people plant a breadfruit tree at the birth of a child,” Horton says, “with the underlying idea that such a tree can feed one person for a lifetime.”
And the breadcrumb reliability seems to extend into the future. Horton and colleagues investigated how well the trees will do in the period 2060-2080, under different emission scenarios.
Resistant to climate change
“We found that while the area where breadfruit trees can grow – and yields – will decrease a bit, all things considered they are quite resilient to climate change.” According to the researchers, crops such as grain, rice, soy and corn will certainly have a hard time in the tropics under the rising temperatures and everything that they bring.
So, looking to the future, quinoa and breadfruit are already quite promising crops for Europe and the tropics respectively – and scientists are busy making them even more promising. “In the early 2000s, the yield was about 2 tons per hectare,” says Van Loo. “Thanks to breeding, our varieties are now moving towards 3 to 4 tonnes. And at that time we had seeds that weighed 2 grams per thousand. Now it is 4 grams.”
Another step that Van Loo and colleagues have taken: “A lot of quinoa from the Andes has a bitter layer. You then have to remove that, which costs water and also loses a piece of the seed. By determining the genome sequences of hundreds of bitter and non-bitter offspring of crosses, we have been able to remove that layer. This means that the entire removal step is no longer necessary.”
A high protein content
Sometimes unexpected effects occur during breeding, says Van Loo. “By selecting for high production, we turned out to get seeds that contained more starch and less protein. We then examined the protein content of the seeds of many different offspring of crosses. This allowed us to obtain quinoa varieties with a high seed yield, larger seeds and a high protein content.”
Similar research is being conducted on the breadfruit, says Horton. “In Hawaii there are plantations where growers bring all kinds of breadfruit tree varieties, which they grow on different sides of volcanoes. They are thus exposed to a wide range of climatic conditions. In this way they try to find out which variants perform best in different places.”
At the same time, the research aimed at improving these types of ‘obscure’ crops is very small-scale. “There are hundreds of crops you can grow,” says Van Loo. “But 90 percent of the total production is accounted for by just ten of those species: corn, rice, wheat, palm, soy… And investments are mainly made in those few crops to maximize production. Because if you manage to get it even a little bit better, it will yield more per euro of research money than a major step in a crop that is hardly grown.”
Billion dollar industry
Horton, as a climate scientist not involved in research into breeding breadfruit trees, has the same opinion. “If you look at how much money goes into a crop like corn, where a company like Monsanto develops plants that are more resistant to pests or climate change… That’s a billion-dollar industry. If you were to invest those kinds of resources in breadfruit trees, you could also make enormous strides.”
Another problem you encounter when introducing a new crop to an area: consumers will not automatically buy it en masse. You will have to use marketing to make such a relatively unknown product popular. The Wageningen company GreenFood50 has taken on this task for the quinoa in our region. “The quinoa grown in the Benelux is marketed to supermarkets and as an ingredient to the food industry,” says Van Loo. “GreenFood50 also comes up with all kinds of recipes to show consumers what you can make with quinoa.”
Cooking, eating and the role of culture
The breadfruit tree – hugely popular in the Caribbean – faces a similar challenge in areas where the fruit is new. “So much about cooking and eating has to do with the culture someone grew up in,” Horton says. “Just as people here have not eaten quinoa all their lives and may have never even heard of it until recently, there is currently no demand for breadfruit in certain regions. Finding a place for them in a huge number of different kitchens – that’s something you don’t just do.”
Yet perhaps we should not be too discouraged by thoughts along the lines of ‘what the farmer does not know, he does not eat (or grow)’. Throughout world history, crops from elsewhere have managed to establish themselves firmly on a new continent. Think of the potato; originally from America, later the popular food in our country.
Or chili peppers: now an indispensable part of hot Indian curries, but the Portuguese first had to introduce them to the region. In the same way, it is quite conceivable that breadfruit chips will eventually become the snack of the Sahel and quinoa burgers will be a daily occurrence here in a few decades.
The great vegetable move
In addition to quinoa in Europe and breadfruit in the tropics, there are many more crops that scientists and governments believe could be grown more widely in certain areas. Five examples.
A risottorist
Now mainly grown in Italy, it could also be an option in the Low Countries. The advantage is that the groundwater level can rise in a risotto rice field; This in turn results in less subsidence of the soil, a phenomenon that releases carbon dioxide. However, a trial with the crop in Leiden, Netherlands, failed last year.
Parelgiers
Originally from the Sahel. Can withstand drought and heat better than wheat, does well in fairly infertile soil, contains relatively high levels of zinc, iron and other nutrients. One of the countries that scientists say would benefit from more pearl millet cultivation is Pakistan.
Fonio
Like pearl millet, it grows well in dry, hot areas. Since wheat imports became significantly more expensive due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, governments in Senegal and other West African countries have encouraged the use of fonio and other indigenous crops.
Bambara-aardnoot
Nutritious legume, native to West Africa, grown in tropical Africa and Asia. It is now mainly grown for own use, but more can be done with it. According to South African scientists, for example, you can use lactic acid bacteria to make probiotics.
Horseradish tree
Fast growing tree that originally occurred in the hills south of the Himalayas. Can withstand drought well. Both the leaves and pods are edible. The organization Plant More Moringa is committed to growing as many pepper root trees as possible in Burkina Faso.
