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Business Daily: False banana: A new superfood?

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False banana: a new superfood?

27/04/2022 GMT

False banana: A new superfood?

BBC World Service - Business Daily, False banana: A new superfood?

Could enset, or false banana, help solve global food insecurity?

Is it time for a crop, popular in Ethiopia, to thrive around the world?

As the spectre of food insecurity grows and climate change threatens lives and livelihoods, could enset play a part in assuaging hunger? Elizabeth Hotson delves into the many and varied properties of a crop consumed mainly in parts of Ethiopia and she asks how it might be possible to widen the appeal of a plant which takes months to turn into an something edible. 

Dr Wendewek Abebe from Hawassa university in southern Ethiopia is a leading researcher of enset and he explains why it’s known as the ‘tree against hunger.’ Dr Abebe also takes us on a trip to meet a farmer who cultivates the crop and considers it a superfood. Back in the UK, Dr James Borrell, a research fellow at Kew Gardens in London explains why cultivating - and ultimately consuming enset - takes a lot of time, energy and local knowledge. And Berhanu Tesfaye, owner of Zeret Kitchen, an Ethiopian restaurant in London, shares a rare meal of kocho - bread made from enset. 

(Photo: Enset crop in Southern Ethiopia. Credit: Getty Images)

Presenter/producer: Elizabeth Hotson

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