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AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center is participating at the 29th International Horticultural Congress, August 17-22 in Brisbane, Australia! The IHC is the world’s premier horticulture event, attracting more than 3000 visitors to explore all aspects of horticulture, from world food production; human health effects of fruits, vegetables, nuts and berries; traditional and modern knowledge of medicinal and aromatic plants; functional & biofortified food and GMOs in horticulture; precision horticulture; and connections between nature, plants, landscapes and human health.

At booth #64 in the Exhibition Hall, the AVRDC team is meeting visitors and answering questions about the Center’s work — in particular about indigenous or traditional vegetables, and the role these crops play in improving nutrition, health and incomes for small-scale farmers in developing countries.

The congress features 43 symposia covering a spectrum of horticultural topics.

AVRDC hosts First International Symposium on Indigenous Vegetables at IHC from August 20-22

The triple burden of hunger, overconsumption and micronutrient deficiencies has sparked a global epidemic of non-communicable diseases including obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes among different population groups, in particular those from the South and Central Pacific region. Consuming a balanced diet rich in fruit and vegetables is the first line of defense against these scourges. But which vegetables?

This is the question to be posed by Dr. Dyno Keatinge, Director General of The World Vegetable Center (AVRDC), who give the keynote presentation during the First International Symposium on Indigenous Vegetables, scheduled for August 20-22 during the  International Horticulture Congress (Twitter: #IHC2014).

The Center’s genebank maintains the world’s largest public vegetable germplasm collection with more than 60,899 accessions from 156 countries, including about 12,000 accessions of indigenous vegetables.

“While tomatoes and cabbage certainly make a contribution to health, there are hundreds of less well-known vegetables packed with vitamins and minerals, such as moringa leaves, bitter melon, leafy nightshade and amaranth, to name just a few, that can add much-needed nutritional diversity to diets,” said Dr. Keatinge.

The symposium aims to highlight the role of indigenous vegetables for nutritional security, and to make the case for greater investment in research and development for these underutilized species.

“We yet know little about suitable production, agronomy and post-harvest management for many of these useful species and quality seed availability remains an important constraint,” said Dr Keatinge.

Indigenous or traditional vegetables are locally important crops that help sustain economies, human nutrition and health, but which have yet to attain the global recognition and research funding of commodities like tomato and cabbage.

“Hundreds of these nutrient-dense indigenous vegetable species could enrich diets well beyond the areas where they typically are grown, if quality seed could be obtained and suitable agronomic and postharvest handling practices were applied,” Keatinge said.

“For instance, slippery cabbage (aibika, bele)—a common vegetable grown in the South Pacific—has a very high level of folate and is thus of considerable importance in the diets of pregnant women, yet this germplasm is not yet preserved in genebanks and is essentially at risk of being lost regionally owing to lack of research investment.”

More research into the growth habits, nutritional qualities, production methods and seed systems for indigenous vegetables would help to diversify agricultural production, which is increasingly reliant on just a few staple crops.

“Collecting indigenous and traditional species in genebanks and characterizing their traits for future breeding work can halt the erosion of genetic diversity as global vegetables become more prominent in diets worldwide,” Keatinge said.

Also scheduled for symposium keynote speeches are

Dr. Mary Taylor, Taylor AgriConsult, Powys, UK, who will consider the constraints on access to and availability of indigenous vegetable seed and how these can be overcome;

Dr. Stephen C. Weller, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, USA, presenting information on research and outreach activities related to the value-chain for African indigenous vegetables in Eastern Africa, especially on production technologies;

Dr. Suzie Newman, New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, Central Coast Primary Industries Centre, Australia, who will explore ways to maximize the market potential of indigenous vegetables, particularly for smallholder farmers; and

Dr. Bruce Cogill, Nutrition and Marketing Diversity Programme, Bioversity International, Rome, Italy, sharing his view on linking local and indigenous vegetables to food and nutrition policy.

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International plenary speakers at IHC2014 include:

  • Em. Prof. Marc Van Montagu, World Food Prize Laureate (2013) and co-discoverer of the transformation technology used worldwide to produce genetically engineered plants.
  • Dr. Shenggen Fan, Director General of the leading food think-tank, International Food Policy Research Institute, who received the 2014 World Food Programme’s Hunger Hero Award.
  • Dr. Dennis Gonsalves, former director of the USDA Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center, who led the development of the virus-resistant transgenic papaya, saving the Hawaiian papaya industry.
  • Malcolm Smith, the founding design director of the Integrated Urbanism Unit at Arup, London. The title of his keynote address is “Food forming places – horticulture and the contemporary city”.
  • Dr. Martin Hamer, CEO, International Centre for Sustainable Development, Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, who specialises in preventing transfer of pollutants into the food chain.