CIAT 13 January, 2016 by Georgina Smith (comments)

If you’re on a diet in 2016, restricting your carb intake might be on your list of New Year’s resolutions. But around the world, demand is on the rise for starch and other forms of carbohydrate, as incomes rise and consumer preferences change. It might seem strange that demand for a starchy root crop would increase with higher incomes. It might seem strange that demand for a starchy root crop would increase with higher incomes. But the multiple applications of cassava in diverse markets have helped it fight its reputation as an economically ‘inferior’ commodity.

The World Congress on Roots and Tuber Crops, to be held in China next week, (January 18^th – 22^nd) explores exactly the diverse nature of this market. In Asia, cassava is in demand for starch – mostly sweeteners and other products in our modern diets – and dried roots for ethanol or livestock feed.

Self-sufficiency and price support policies for alternative commodities in the region have also favored cassava processing. In recent years, cassava has become a relatively cheap alternative to maize in China – the main export market for cassava products – fueling demand and production expansion in Asia.

Cultivating a top performer  

When it first started, CIAT’s cassava program was a response to the plight of poor farmers who benefitted little from the Green Revolution technologies of the 1960s. Cultivating the most marginal upland areas of the tropics, they were caught in a low productivity trap.

New, high-yielding, high-input grains swept Asia, but some required extensive fertilizer and pesticide use or irrigation schemes to ensure that extracted nutrients were replaced in the soil, for example. In some areas, farmers couldn’t afford irrigation or fertilizer use, and so they turned to other crops.

Cassava already grew in Asia, but it attracted little research investment and yields were low. Yet yields were relatively impressive considering the crop was planted with minimal labor and fertilizer investment. It also grew in poor, low-fertile soil where other crops wouldn’t, and was drought-tolerant.

With a vital weapon in their arsenal – the world’s largest collection of cassava landrace varieties or “germplasm” – researchers turned their breeding efforts to genetic discovery and spent decades improving crop yield and management, to provide farmers in Asia with a stepping stone out of poverty.

- See more at: http://www.ciatnews.cgiar.org/2016/01/13/a-smart-revolution-cassava-in-asia/#sthash.K5sYYUe5.dpuf