E-DRUG: Growing Artemisia annua in tropical Africa (6)
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Dear Mr. Rowland,
I just came across your Februay post and its responses. I am advisor to President Wade on organic agriculture and natural products in Senegal (although I'm based in Paris). I have been working on a project to develop culture and processing of Artemisia annua in Senegal for 3 years now.
I suggest you get in contact with Dr. Andi Brisibe at the university in Calabar. He has been working on trialing different strains of AA in Nigeria. His phone number is 234-80-23187847. Meanwhile, two seed strains of AA have been developed which will do well in Africa while having an artemisinin content of around 1%. One is the Anamed strain developed by the NGO of the same name. The other is the Artemis strain which is available (theoretically) from Mediplant in Switzerland. The trouble is that with the worldwide effort to increase AA production, Mediplant can't meet the demand for seed.
Meanwhile, we are working with ASNAPP and Rutgers University to develop additional strains. The problem in tropical Africa for AA is not the heat but the day length or photoperiod. Most strains of AA flower when day length reaches around 13 hours. In temperate climate, the plant reaches heights of up to two meters before flowering. In tropical zones with their shorter and less variable day length, they tend to flower at a very small size, thus not producing enough biomass to make extraction feasible.
The trick is to develop strains which are photoperiod-neutral and have a sufficiently high artemisinin content (1% or higher). We are experiencing success in doing this under laboratory greenhouse conditions at Rutgers and its looking as if we will come out of the research there with strains superior to Mediplant and Anamed.
The problem for us in developing this project (we have already proven that the plant will grow fine in Subsahelian conditions with irrigation) is lack of funding. Upwards of 20 million dollars has gone into similar projects in East Africa from big funders such as WHO, USAID, etc. Unfortunately, traditionally these regions seem to receive the bulk of such funding, while West Africa struggles. I continue to struggle for West Africa.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
Barbara Wilde
Advisor to the President on Organic Agriculture and Natural Products
Republic of Senegal
10 rue de Logelbach
75017 Paris
Tel: +33 (0)6 74 97 87 46
Fax: +33(0)1 47 66 20 16
plantwild@wanadoo.fr