| Category | Agriculture |
| Keywords | Eragrostis tef, Ethiopia, Super-food, breeding |
| Current development stage | General list: TRL1 Basic Principles Observed |
| Collaboration Opportunity | Sponsored Research with an option to License Research Results |
Background
Teff (Eragrostis teff) is the staple cereal in Ethiopia and other countries in the Horn of Africa. Teff is gaining popularity in many countries due to its nutritional content: it is a well-balanced essential amino aci
Tef, (Eragrostis tef, also known as teff) is the staple cereal in Ethiopia and is an underutilized cereal crop in other world wide countries. In recent decades, tef gained worldwide interest as a gluten-free, highly nutritious “super-food” grain full of well-balanced essential amino acids and a high concentration of protein. Tef is resilient to a wide range of stresses, including drought and salinity, hence holding the potential to support food and nutrition security under semi-arid and arid environments.
The introduction of tef from traditional agriculture in Ethiopia into modern, mechanized and irrigated conditions presents many challenges. During the last decade, we studied various aspects of tef agronomy, including sowing practices, weed control, mineral nutrition, irrigation, response to salinity, and forage production. At the same time, we assembled a tef genetic diversity panel and used it to identify genomic regions associated with productivity, quality and other traits of interest. Recently, we developed a protocol for tef hybridization, a critical step towards breeding.
Our previous studies and achievements make us one of the leading tef research groups in the world and place us in an excellent starting point towards breeding novel tef varieties for arid and semi-arid conditions.
Tef experiment in Israel, 2019
Our Innovation
Building on our large collection (ca. 300) of intensively characterized tef lines, we propose to develop tef varieties for grain and/or forage, high yielding, high quality and specifically adapted to modern, mechanized and (possibly) irrigated farming systems in arid and semi-arid regions.
The development of novel tef varieties, targeted in the proposed project, will facilitate tef cultivation in drought prone regions of Israel (eg. Negev) and other countries. This will boost the superiority of tef as a high quality gluten-free super-food, support farmers’ livelihood, boost nutritional security in arid region and facilitate tef’s worldwide consumption.
Opportunity
We are seeking partners to fund research and breeding towards the commercialization of high quality tef varieties for health food, grain and forage markets.
