Dr Ethel Phiri, a lecturer in the Sustainable Agriculture Programme in the Faculty of AgriSciences at Stellenbosch University (SU), combines scientific expertise with traditional knowledge with a view to food security and environmental benefit. Phiri spoke to Engela Duvenage about how she and her team are growing climate-smart indigenous crops.
My mornings typically start with a walk through a greenhouse at Stellenbosch University (SU), South Africa. My students and I check the sprinkler system that provides our plantings of Bambara groundnuts with nutrient-enriched water.
Ours is one of the first experimental greenhouse-based aeroponics systems in a developing country where an indigenous legume is grown using a generic Internet of Things platform, in pursuit of climate-smart agricultural options. My PhD student, Mosima Mabitsela, published the proof-of-concept for growing Bambara groundnuts in such a system in the journal Heliyon last year.
In the summer rainfall areas of sub-Saharan Africa this fast-growing crop is known by tindlubu, ditloo, jugo bean, or earth pea. It is a type of hypogeal crop, as its seeds (or nuts) develop underground within pods.
To me Bambara groundnuts taste like a combination of chickpeas, peanuts and common beans. My grandmother, Nciphile Thewa Khumalo, grows some in her garden, along with sorghum, sweet potato and indigenous pumpkins. She'd be very surprised seeing them thrive in a greenhouse rather than in someone's home garden or cultivated on a patch of communal land.
I've wanted to be a scientist since the age of 12. I completed a BSc degree in Natural and Environmental Sciences at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002, followed by an honours degree in Botany. A PhD in Zoology, on freshwater crabs, followed at SU.
I have since returned to my first love — plants and agriculture. As a lecturer and researcher in the Sustainable Agriculture Programme of the SU Faculty of AgriSciences I study how to make farming underutilized indigenous African crops (some call them orphan crops) such as spinach-like imbuya, tinhlumayo and marama beans, grains such as imfe and amabele (sorghum) more commercially viable, even more fashionable. I combine scientific knowledge with traditional wisdom to foster collaboration and promote the well-being of people and the environment.
I believe we can feed the world, even in a warming future, by growing more of the hardy, pest resistant and climate-smart crops typically farmed within developing nations. This will help us move towards a more sustainable, diverse, and inclusive agricultural system that benefits local communities and society.
This article was originally published in Nature.
Photo: Dr Ethel Phiri in the aeroponics greenhouse where she grows sorghum.
