Just over a decade ago the genus Allanblackia was a little-known though locally important group of forest species in Africa’s humid equatorial belt. Allanblackia seeds contain a fat that is excellent for a number of food applications and potentially also for personal care products such as crèmes. Today, over 10,000 farmers are involved either as collectors or growers of Allanblackia, but for a sustainable business in the tree’s fat, upscaling is needed to provide the right volumes of product with the right quality and at the right price. As one project has learned, partnership is a key ingredient for achieving this.

A first step in the transition from a forest species to a cash crop is the execution of a domestication program. Domestication means selecting desirable traits from wild species and developing seedlings with these properties that can be grown on farms for their products.

Dr Daniel Ofori, a tree domestication specialist with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), is currently the coordinator of the Allanblackia domestication project in Eastern, West and Central African regions.

“The public-private partnership (known as Novella partnership) that is trying to build a successful and sustainable Allanblackia business was sparked by a demand for the oil by the private sector, specifically Unilever,” he explains.

“As the project demanded specific skills and capabilities, Unilever decided to partner with the public and private sectors, forming the Novella partnership to build a supply chain and assess the feasibility of the domestication and upscaling of Allanblackia into a substantial African business.”

Currently, the partnership involves Unilever and the public non-profit organisations World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), World Conservation Union (IUCN), Union for Ethical Biotrade (UEBT), local Allanblackia organizations (nurseries, supply chain), Rivers State Sustainable Development Agency, Novel Development Tanzania, and Novel Development Ghana. FORM International is a private-sector partner specialized in designing and implementing planting models. In addition to this the partnership is working with  government organizations and local NGOs involving farmers in four countries in equatorial Africa.

After just over a decade’s work, local supply chains are functioning and over 200,000 Allanblackia seedlings have been planted in Tanzania, Nigeria and Ghana. Monitoring and Evaluation programs have been developed and implemented—these should provide the data needed for the assessment of the feasibility of Allanblackia as a business.

“The Allanblackia experience has many lessons to teach on participatory tree domestication of traditionally important forest tree species in Africa,” says  Ofori.

A recent article by Ofori and others, published in the journal Acta Horticulturae, discusses these lessons, among them: 

1. How to deal with a recalcitrant germinator

Successfully growing allanblackia from seed is a long and tedious undertaking, because the seeds take months to germinate. The partnership has pulled together ICRAF’s expertise in tree biology with innovations by farmers to slash the time to achieve 75%  seed germination from 10 months to 3 months.

2. How to choose propagation and seedling multiplication methods

Allanblackia is dioecious, meaning that a particular tree is either male or female. This characteristic means that when grown from seed, farmers have to wait almost 10 years to see if they have a male or a female tree, signaled by white (female) or orange (male) flowers at tree maturity. Because the oil-containing seeds come from the fruits produced by female trees, the project has focused increasingly on vegetative propagation to produce planting stocks. This allows seedlings identical to female (mother) trees with desirable properties to be produced. Vegetative propagation also shortens the period to reach maturity. Grafts, for instance, flower within 2 years and fruit within 4 years.

3. How to spread new technologies, materials and knowledge in cost-effective and sustainable ways

Producing a commercial commodity from hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers needs a different model from the approaches used in centralized commercial plantations. For dissemination of quality planting material, Novella partners are using participatory research and the Rural Resource Centres (RRCs).

These RCCs are managed by national agriculture institutes,  community groups and local NGOs. The partnership equips RRCs with seedling propagation units, nursery facilities, mother blocks (plots with female trees with desirable traits) and demonstration plots. Farmers, technicians and other stakeholders come here to receive training on nursery establishment and management, as well as tree propagation and cultivation techniques. So far, the project has equipped seven RRCs in three countries.

4. How to develop a market chain that works for smallholder farmers

Novella Africa began to develop market supply chains for Allanblackia oil in 2002. Novel Development companies act as buyers of the dried seeds from farmers. The oil is extracted under the supervision of Novel companies, who then sell the oil to Unilever and other buyers. Public meetings, radio, posters and video are used to inform local people about Allanblackia and its market.

Currently, the most important activities of the project in Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Tanzania are the mass-production of seedlings of selected, superior trees, and the development of sound agroforestry systems for large-scale integration of Allanblackia on farms.

Ofori notes that by encouraging on-farm cultivation of Allanblackia, the project is having a positive impact on the environment by decreasing the pressure on the remaining trees found in the wild. “The sustainability of the tree’s genetic resources is assured,” he says.

Priority research questions under the partnership currently include:

• Is there a link between morphological characteristics and oil quality and quantity?
• What are Allablackia’s flowering and fruiting dynamics? This information is important for the development of a business plan;
• How can seed and seedling distribution systems and planting models be further improved?
• Can tissue culture technology be used to mass-produce Allanblackia planting stocks?
• What is the growth architecture of different propagule types (seedlings, cuttings and layers)? 

Public–private sector partnership in tree domestication provides a good model for the domestication of traditionally important forest tree species of high economic potential. Such trees include baobab, tamarind, and the medicinal species Warburgia ugandensis and Prunus africana, all of which are being researched under different projects within ICRAF’s Tree diversity, domestication and delivery programme.

“Strategic partnerships accelerate progress and can address even huge problems like lack of propagation techniques, poor access to quality planting materials, lack of knowledge on tree management, on-farm and value chain development, and a host more,” says Ofori.

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Journal articles:

Allanblackia species: A model for the domestication of high potential tree crops in Africa. By D. A. Ofori, K. Kehlenbeck, M. Munjuga, E. Asaah, C. Kattah, F. Rutatina, and R. Jamnadass. ISHS Acta Horticulturae 979

Download full article here.

Peprah, T., Ofori, D. A.,  Siaw, D. E. K. A.,  Addo-Danso, S. D.,  Cobbinah, J. R., Simons, A. J. and Jamnadass, R. (2009). Reproductive biology and characterization of Allanblackia parviflora A. Chev. in Ghana. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 56(7): 1037-1044

Further information:

Novella Africa website

ICRAF Science Domain on Tree diversity, domestication and delivery

The ICRAF publication Seeds of Hope booklet chronicles the project in detail.

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