Student-led plant breeding initiative brings African communities in Minnesota a taste of home

People of African descent in Minnesota have a taste for leafy greens that aren’t quite suited to the North Star State’s cold nights and short summers. A student-led plant breeding initiative plans to change that. Founded in 2021, the Community Plant Breeding Team (CPBT) at the University of Minnesota aims to take four popular African vegetables—amaranth, spiderwisp, jute mallow, and Ethiopian mustard—and develop breeds that can better tolerate the local climate. Members of the CPBT laid out what they’ve learned so far in a Crop Science perspective article. 

Minnesota has a large and growing African diaspora, with more than 150,000 African-born refugees, immigrants, and their US-born descendants living in the Twin Cities alone. This population has led to an increasing demand for culturally relevant vegetables that Minnesotan growers cannot totally fulfill. The few producers in the Twin Cities that sell African vegetables cannot meet this huge demand. African community members  living as far away as Tulsa and Fargo will drive hours to Minneapolis to find the food of their culture, with lines of cars waiting just for the chance to buy some fresh produce. The vegetables sell out so fast that sellers don’t even have time to set up their stands, leaving many consumers to return home without any greens at all.  

This huge demand prompted Rex Bernardo to recruit graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to start the CPBT. Bernardo, director of the University of Minnesota Plant Breeding Center, wanted to create special breeds of popular African veggies that could better survive Minnesotan conditions.

Building community

The CPBT integrates community members into the breeding process through participatory plant breeding, giving them a say in which vegetables to breed, access to fresh greens and seeds, and knowledge about topics in plant science. All the while, the students and researchers get lessons in community engagement. The fundamental lessons of the project center around the importance of building community, using inclusive language, and protecting the cultural and scientific knowledge about the plants. In just four years, the collaborative program has taught researchers and community members the kinds of lessons they could never learn in a classroom; specifically, five lessons to help its members learn how to breed plants and grow them for their communities.

Lesson 1: Prioritize relationships within the community

The Community Plant Breeding Team started out by focusing solely on the plants but soon shifted to prioritizing people. Despite having extensively researched the biology and production methods of the plants, the team’s first plots failed. Most plants didn’t even grow, and the researchers realized they just didn’t know enough about their breeds. To fix this, they incorporated the voices, needs, and traditional knowledge of African community leaders into the program.

 ... [The CPBT] incorporated the voices, needs, and traditional knowledge of African community leaders into the program.

The Community Plant Breeding Team sought the help of knowledgeable community members, including small-scale producers and master gardeners, to help set priorities and goals for the team. Chidi Chidozie, chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee of the Hennepin County Master Gardeners, was cited as a key contact to the CPBT and provided the researchers with a wealth of information on African vegetables. Through these relationships, students and postdoctoral researchers have learned more about the traditional growing methods of the plants and their significance. 

To connect with the community, the researchers host outreach events. One popular event they hosted was a 2023 open house where the CPBT showcased their research, gave tours of demonstration plots filled with African plant species, and talked with community members about their interests and needs. Today, one of the most integral parts of their outreach efforts is their community garden, where visitors can engage with the garden and take produce home. In just a few years, the gardens have grown several hundred kilograms of produce, letting local African diaspora to get back in touch with their food history, while giving those outside of Minnesota’s African population a chance to get to know these veggies, too. 

Initially, it was a challenge to get community members engaged with the CPBT. The team learned how to work with community members through trial and error. They started with email surveys but received very few responses. Initial visits to farmers markets In the Twin Cities to meet with growers weren’t fruitful either. Building trust was the key to building community engagement. Historically, non-white farmers and consumers have been ignored and disenfranchised by university research and extension, which has led to a lack of trust between university officials and African community members in some cases. Listening to the needs of the community, consistent in-person engagement, and taking time to build mutually beneficial relationships has allowed the CPBT to connect more and more with members of the public. Thankfully, their efforts have led to popular events, such as the aforementioned open house, which had about 125 attendees. 

Lesson 2: Language matters

The team learned the importance of language through their own name and through the plants they cultivated. The Community Plant Breeding Team originally called themselves “Vegetable Breeding for Immigrant Communities,” but the name suggested that they simply served immigrant communities and didn’t involve them in the process, while also leaving out natural-born citizens of African diaspora. Their new name better reflects their commitment to serving and actively engaging with all members of a broad diaspora.

Lesson 5: Knowledge and breeds can easily be lost

The genetic material of different plant breeds can die off over time due to bad weather, hungry animals, and poor plant growth. Because there aren’t many commercial sellers or seed banks of these plants, it becomes incredibly important for the CPBT to keep their seeds stored and safe. In a similar vein, cultural knowledge of these plants can be lost just as easily. Immigrants can often struggle to connect to their culture and traditions when they move to a new country, and agricultural traditions can be lost after even a single generation, especially when resources are limited. But by sharing knowledge and resources, cultural practices are maintained across time.

Community makes us—and research—stronger 

A few years after the program started, team members have continuously learned from their mistakes and helped others benefit from their lessons. The program has taught students and early career plant scientists how to tackle complex problems from different perspectives and learn more about plant breeding, with the most important message being to prioritize people over plants. Community is the richest source of knowledge, and so the community and its ties should be upheld before anything else. The team members are planning to release their first African vegetable breed in the next few years and hope to extend this work to Asian and Latin American communities in Minnesota further down the line. By talking with chefs, home cooks, and consumers as well as growers, they hope to expand their reach throughout the communities they work with. Currently, the CPBT consists of 15 students, one staff member, one faculty member, and many volunteers. 61 total volunteers contributed 408 hours to fieldwork and outreach events in 2024, and the team expects that number to keep growing as the team’s work and scope evolves. As demand for culturally relevant foods increases, the possibility of other such teams forming increases, and the CPBT hopes that their work can inspire others to make more programs that build bridges across cultural divides all throughout America.