Sorghum growers across Africa’s dry-land regions face a common, relentless foe — striga. This parasitic plant attacks the root of millets like sorghum, devastating the plant’s yield and endangering food security for rural communities which depend on sorghum as a major source of carbohydrates and micronutrients.
Plant breeders across Africa are on a mission to defend farmers against striga infestations. To start, they must be able to measure the growth, performance and composition of sorghum and striga, which historically has been difficult due to access to and investment in technology. Now, accessible digital tools are being deployed in innovative ways by the Center of Innovation for Finger Millet and Sorghum (CIFMS), which is helping scientists react swiftly to breed improved varieties.
With support from ILCI’s breeding informatics and phenomics teams, CIFMS is updating and adapting existing technologies for digital data collection in the field. Together, the teams developed an approach to collect and analyze striga seed samples within the Field Book app, a single digital platform that simplifies field data collection while reducing transcription errors. Breeders are working directly with smallholder farmers to simultaneously collect seeds and capture farmers’ knowledge about the striga affecting their fields, according to Scovia Adikini, principal investigator of CIFMS based at the National Semi Arid Resources Research Institute (NaSARRI) in Uganda.
Co-developing and adapting tools to the unique circumstances of national breeding programs is at the heart of ILCI’s philosophy. “By working collaboratively, we were able to develop a robust solution for striga collection and surveys using Field Book, even though it wasn't originally designed for this purpose,” said Trevor Rife, co-lead of the phenomics objective area based at Kansas State University.