Ensuring Food Security for Vulnerable

FOR VULNERABLE POPULATIONS

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides funding to KAUST to combat striga weed in Africa

SALIM AL BABILI Professor of Plant Science

WE ARE TRYING TO IMPROVE FOOD SECURITY BY GENERATING KNOWLEDGE THROUGH STATEOF-THE-ART TECHNOLOGIES IN THE LABORATORY AND QUICKLY DEVELOPING THIS KNOWLEDGE INTO TOOLS THAT CAN BE EMPLOYED BY SMALL-HOLDER FARMERS IN THE FIELD.

Purple witchweed, scientifically known as striga hermonthica, is an invasive parasitic plant that undermines cereal crops in sub-Saharan Africa. Estimates suggest it causes annual losses exceeding $7 billion, endangering the livelihoods and food supplies of an estimated 300 million people. Backed by a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant, researchers at KAUST are using molecular genetics to try to save staple crops from the scourge of witchweed.

Salim Al Babili, Professor of Plant Science in KAUST’s Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering division, is leading the fight against witchweed. Together with experts in structural biology, chemistry, bioinformatics, agronomy and weed science, and genetics from KAUST, Japan, the Netherlands, Burkina Faso and Niger, Professor Al Babili’s research has focused on disrupting the invasive plant’s germination pathways.

A single germinating striga plant leaves as many as 200,000 seeds in the soil that can remain dormant for up to 15 years. Host cereal crops like pearl millet release plant hormones into the soil called strigolactones. Striga seeds sense this hormone and it triggers them to germinate. Professor Al Babili and his team have a multi-pronged strategy to prevent striga infestations, which involves preventing striga seeds from germinating while increasing staple crops’ genetic resistance to striga. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation immediately saw promise in the project and awarded $1.5 million toward KAUST’s research.

The researchers have already made some major breakthroughs. So far, they have developed synthetic strigolactones that can be sprayed on seed-infested fields to induce the striga seeds to prematurely germinate and die. In a field trial in Burkina Faso, this tactic reduced striga growth by up to 65%. Researchers are already working on increasing the success rate of this “suicidal germination”.

Professor Al Babili and his colleagues have also stumbled upon a compound that can inhibit germination. This compound tightly binds to the germination receptors in striga seeds, preventing strigolactones’ access to it and inhibiting the seeds from sprouting. Using these findings, work is under way to develop a strategy that could support the manufacture of striga-specific herbicides. Developing genetically resistant pearl millet crops is another tactic being used by the team.

If the strategies employed by Professor Al Babili and his team work, they could greatly enhance pearl millet resistance to striga infestation, which would have a substantial positive impact on food security and the incomes of small-holder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION

“Investing in Africa’s farmers requires strong global partnerships, and this is why we are very pleased to collaborate with KAUST, an institution ranking among the world’s leading universities in the fields of agricultural and biological science.”

Hassan Al Damluji, Head of Middle East Relations at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation