Orphan crops, also known as underutilized, lost, or neglected crops, reflect certain geographical locations and are grossly underexploited by the scientific community because they are deemed minor crops with less economic importance.
In recent times, these crops have been observed to be dense, making them a resource base for the fight against global food
insecurity and malnutrition, particularly in Africa.
African Orphan Crop Consortium (AOCC), led by Howard Yana-Shapiro,
is an organization that pools concerted efforts from both private and public institutions to
facilitate genomic improvement of selected orphan crops by generating necessary genomic resources
(sequence, assemble, and annotate genomes).
Of these orphan crops, our lab mainly works on Okra (Abelmoschus spp.) and partly on Jute mallow (Corchorus olitorius).
Okra is an essential and profitable vegetable crop with substantial production in the southern United States.
However, breeding and improving okra in the U.S. have faced significant setbacks due to the lack of genetic and genomic
resources, which has led to dependence on imports to meet domestic demands.
This project seeks to bridge that gap by generating these resources, starting from well-characterized germplasm, core set genome assembly, genotyping platform development, and important trait loci database curation. These resources will serve as a springboard for developing cultivars adaptable to other regions of the US while improving general okra production.
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