The future of plant breeding in Africa: An interview with Dr. Rita Mumm

By Sara Boettiger

By 2050, earth's population is expected to exceed 9 billion people. Sustainability is about more than just protecting our current planetary boundaries, it's also about our ability to meet the needs of the next generation of humans. How we continue to improve plant breeding will play an important role in our efforts to sustainably feed the planet.

To talk about how plant breeding can help us unlock a more sustainable future, I reached out to my colleague Dr. Rita Mumm. Dr. Mumm is a scientist, educator and entrepreneur who has spent her career pushing the edge of innovation in plant breeding in many different ways.  

You’ve likely eaten the fruits (or vegetables) of her labor. Over the past 30 years, she has developed some of the first insecticide- and herbicide-resistant corn. Her work has improved testing systems and breeding strategies to help plant breeders bring new innovations to market. Today, Dr. Mumm supports the training of future plant breeders as a Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois and Education and Training Lead for the USAID Soybean Innovation Lab. She champions plant breeding in Africa through her role as Director of Capacity Development and Mobilisation for the African Orphan Crop Consortium (AOCC) (they focus on DNA sequencing of traditional African crops), Director of the UC Davis African Plant Breeding Academy (AfPBA) (they train active plant breeders in ways to be more efficient and effective in developing new crop varieties). In addition, she continues to support the seed industry worldwide as Principal at the consulting firm GeneMax.

Here, Dr. Mumm talks about how the industry has changed, how new technologies like CRISPR are an essential part of a sustainable food secure future, and the importance of the African Plant Breeding Academy.

1.  How have you seen the plant breeding industry change over the last 20 years? Can you describe some of the pivotal moments or breakthroughs in plant breeding that stand out to you from your career thus far?

I had the good fortune to enter the seed industry at a time when biotechnologies were first being considered for plant breeding. As a graduate student at the University of Illinois, I studied ways to maximize the utility and value of molecular markers in plants with Professor John Dudley, who was a pioneer in the field.  Molecular markers, which are simply “addresses” along the chromosomes, allow plant breeders to track which genes are involved in the expression of key traits for new crop varieties. This technology helps breeders choose parents (the particular plants from which new traits will be taken), one of the most critical decisions in plant breeding, and help identify progeny (new plant offspring) with the greatest genetic promise, accelerating the breeding pipeline. This and other DNA-based technologies have created the plant breeding industry as we know it.

Since the early 1990s, the ways in which we’ve applied these technologies have advanced greatly, helping us develop improved climate-smart crops and get new varieties into farmers’ hands more quickly. Today, we know even more about how genes work, allowing us to create improved crop varieties with traits wanted and needed by farmers, consumers, and other stakeholders in the value chain.

Plant breeding can help us adopt more climate-smart practices and address the needs of farmers – Genetic Modification (GM) and CRISPR are two DNA-based technologies that make this possible. GM or “genetically modified” traits have been developed in response to farmer needs for control of pests (like insects and weeds) and have become mainstream in crops like corn, soybeans, cotton, and canola. CRISPR can do even more, facilitating precise, directed genetic changes in a plant’s genome.

2.  What makes CRISPR so revolutionary?

At its core, CRISPR allows us to improve all kinds of crops for all kinds of traits in a way that is faster, cheaper, and can be applied more broadly than other GM approaches. Thanks to faster development times, CRISPR facilitates innovations that would otherwise take years, maybe decades, to accomplish with traditional plant breeding.

Consider nutrient-boosted beans with high levels of iron and zinc, high-temperature tolerant tomato, cassava with reduced anti-nutritional factors, and corn resistant to devastating Maize Lethal Necrosis disease. Whether making crop varieties more productive, more resistant to extreme weather, less susceptible to diseases, or more nutritious, CRISPR is a powerful tool that is “democratizing” the field of Trait Development.

Traditional GM (genetically modified) traits have much higher costs during the initial scientific discovery phase, and additional costs associated with regulatory approval. Developing improved varieties with CRISPR is cheaper than relying on GM. That means that we can use CRISPR to develop foods that have a much smaller potential market, lowering the barriers to entry. This makes it possible for even small or non-profit organizations to develop new varieties to improve nutrition or farmers’ income in small markets with unique sets of agronomic circumstances.  

3.  Can you share more on how you’ve been involved with CRISPR or other gene-editing technologies in your own career?

Much of my career in crop improvement has been focused on optimizing development of improved varieties through use of new technologies. Today, I focus on preparing and enabling the crop improvement workforce around the world to meet food and nutritional security goals through my work with the African Orphan Crop Consortium (AOCC) and the African Plant Breeding Academy (AfPBA). The AfPBA has equipped 150 plant breeders from 29 countries to utilize genomic information and technologies in over 225 national breeding programs across Africa.

One new initiative of the AOCC that I’m excited about is the AfPBA CRISPR Course, which will enable teams of scientists in Africa to deliver improved crop varieties that farmers will want to grow and consumers will want to eat. Using banana as a model plant, participants will get first-hand experience in all aspects of the gene editing process, enabling them to create new sources of essential traits. Participants will then be networked with AfPBA plant breeders to facilitate a path to market for gene-edited traits in preferred crop varieties.

Based in Nairobi Kenya, this intensive program will bring together up to 20 participants during three two-week sessions. We anticipate five cohorts over the next five years, empowering 100 scientists across the continent. Course graduates will also be mentored in setting up gene editing facilities and operations at their home institutions, expanding the reach and impact of gene editing across the continent.

Read the full interview at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-plant-breeding-africa-interview-dr-rita-mumm-sara-boettiger/