REVIEW article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Crop and Product Physiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1631221
This article is part of the Research TopicUnlocking the Potential of Underutilized Crops: Emerging Sources of Valuable Bioactives for Future Foods and Food SecurityView all articles
Tapping into the Potential of Okra (Abelmoschus spp.) in Africa: Integrating Value-Added Traits into Breeding
Provisionally accepted
Mathieu A. T. Ayenan1*
Fabrice Vihou2
Mwasilwa Ambali2Jacinta Adoma Opoku3
Dorcas Olubunmi Ibitoye4
Roland Schafleitner5- 1World Vegetable Center (Benin), Cotonou, Benin
- 2World Vegetable Center, Cotonou, Benin
- 3Council for Scientific and Industrial Research - Crops Research Institute, Kumasi, Ghana
- 4National Horticultural Research Institute, Genetic Resources Unit, Ibadan, Nigeria
- 5World Vegetable Center, Mexico, Mexico
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Okra is a nutritious vegetable of global significance. This crop serves various purposes and presents numerous untapped opportunities. However, several challenges hinder Africa from fully harnessing okra's economic and nutritional benefits, including pest and disease pressures, salinity and cold stress, weak seed systems, insufficient market knowledge, and a lack of value addition. A wealth of okra genetic resources is conserved in gene banks worldwide; however, only a handful have been characterized for agronomic and value-added traits, limiting their use in breeding programs. Although traditional breeding has focused on enhancing yield, disease resistance, and pod quality traits, which remain important, the growing demand for new okra-based products such as pectin, oil, snacks, and coffee substitutes offers new opportunities for farmers, processors, and breeders. Meeting these demands will require incorporating value-added traits into breeding programs, as identified in this review. Understanding the diversity of okra germplasm for value-added traits, their genetic architecture, and developing efficient screening methods is crucial for creating improved varieties that meet the needs of farmers, processors, and consumers. Enhancing the value-added traits of okra will increase production to meet the rising demand. We identified key traits of interest for improvement across different okra uses. Improving okra for biotic and abiotic challenges, as well as integrating horticultural and value-added traits, requires an in-depth understanding of the okra market to define and prioritize market segments along with target product profiles that fulfill their requirements, increased investment in okra breeding, collaboration between public and private seed and processing firms, resource sharing, and strengthening seed systems. Building capacity in okra breeding and seed technologies is critical to catalyzing okra improvement in Africa.
Keywords: Abelmoschus esculentus, Opportunity Crops, Value-added traits, trait improvement, Pectins
Received: 19 May 2025; Accepted: 18 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ayenan, Vihou, Ambali, Opoku, Ibitoye and Schafleitner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mathieu A. T. Ayenan, World Vegetable Center (Benin), Cotonou, Benin
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.