Cassava Plant Could Help African Farmers Cope With Climate Change
Calling cassava “the Rambo of food crops,” scientists said the long-neglected root becomes even more productive in hotter temperatures and could be the best bet for African farmers threatened by climate change. Cassava is the second most important source of carbohydrate in sub-Saharan African, after maize, and is eaten by around 500 million people every day.
The root outperformed potatoes, maize, beans, bananas, millet and sorghum in tests using a combination of 24 climate prediction and crop suitability models, said scientists from the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture and the center’s Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security Research Program. Their findings were published in a special edition of the scientific journal Tropical Plant Biology.