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Precious Manomano

Herald Reporter

The Research Services Division under the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development has unveiled a game-changing digitisation initiative to unlock climate-resilient traits from herbarium specimens in a bid to promote food security in the country.
The National Herbarium and Botanic Garden is a centre of research for Zimbabwe’s indigenous plants.

The herbarium has more than 500 000 plant specimens.

The department’s director, Dr Claid Mujaju said by focusing on herbarium specimens, researchers can access vital genetic information related to plant relatives of local crops.

This is key in enhancing crop adaptation, thereby empowering breeders to boost agricultural productivity despite changing climate conditions.

“Climate change is real. In the herbarium, most of the plants we have are relatives to the crops that we grow in our fields. Those genes will help us to survive the vagaries of climate change and conserve the material.

“It can be wild relatives or even other plants. Once we have them online, it means that the accessibility of information becomes easier and our breeders can access the information and utilise the traits that are in the crops.”

Dr Mujaju said the breeding of crops is vital to ensure higher productivity.

He said they will move faster in digitalisation of the database.

The database will be put online when the work is complete so that it will be accessible to scientists, breeders, conservationists, botanists and researchers.

The head of the National Herbarium and Botanic Garden Mr Christopher Chapano said there is need to focus on wild crop relatives to improve food security in the country.

“Climate change is affecting our production so we should focus on these wild crop relatives as they are drought tolerant,” he said.