Tef general useIn Ethiopia, tef is currently the number one crop in terms of acreage, whereit is annually cultivated by over six million farmers on about three millionhectares of land. Farmers prefer tef to other cereals since it fetches highermarket prices and is resilient to climatic and soil related stresses. Tef provides grain for human consumption both as a food and as aningredient for home-brewed local beer and as fodder for livestock. Tef strawis also used as a construction material mixed with clay to plaster traditionalwooden-walled houses and inner fittings. Although the cultivation of tef forhuman consumption was restricted for thousands of years to the Horn ofAfrica, the interest to grow and consume tef has been increasing in the Westin the last decade due to the health-related benefits it offers.

Nutritional facts The Ethiopian cereal tef can be used to make recipes that vary in type,form, and texture. This variety arises as a result of socio-economicdifferences in the society and sometimes as a result of the type of tefused. However, a common understanding among the different culturesis that tef products are a source of energy. Paradoxically there is also a

belief mostly in cities that tef is nutritionally poor and serves no otherpurpose than to keep a stomach full. However, tef seeds contain acomparable and even better nutrient composition than rice and wheat,containing an excellent set of amino acids while being rich in calciumand iron (Table 1, page 60).

Health benefitsCoeliac disease, also known as celiac sprue and gluten-sensitiveenteropathy is a prevalent food hypersensitivity disorder caused by aninflammatory response to wheat gluten and similar proteins of barleyand rye1. The resulting intestinal inflammation often causes symptomsrelated to malabsorption of nutrients and other extra-intestinalsymptoms. At present, the only available treatment is a strict glutenexclusion diet. However, with cereals dominating the daily plates ofmillions of people, it may be difficult to totally avoid them and usinggluten free cereals could be a reasonable alternative.

In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine bySpaenij-Dekking et al.2, wheat, barley, rye, triticale, oats, corn, rice, and 14 tef varieties were analysed for the presence of T-cell stimulatory

Originally domesticated in Ethiopia, tef is a wholegrain cereal that has become a lifestyle food alternative in the West.Its appeal is due to its gluten free qualities and its light and soft texture which can easily be combined with othercuisines. Tef products including tef flour, bread, cookies and the flattened bread injera can be found in organic/healthfood stores in Europe and the USA or can be purchased online. It is estimated that there are more than 90 restaurantsin Europe providing Ethiopian cuisine, at the heart of which is injera.

Tef: Cultivating a healthy lifestyle

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■ Dejene Girma and Zerihun TadeleUniversity of Bern

■ Kebebew AssefaEthiopian Institute of Agricultural Research

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epitopes of α-gliadin, γ-gliadin, and low and highmolecular weight glutenin by T-cell and antibody-based assays. The data gathered from this study haveprovided the first scientific evidence supporting theidea that tef is gluten free. Here at the University ofBern, Switzerland, we sequenced the first tef genomeand through comparative genomics we found none ofthe epitopes associated with T-cell stimulation in tef3.Hence, tef is well-suited to address the growing globaldemand for gluten free products.

Popular tef products and cerealsTef flour can be processed in various ways to makespecific food types depending on locality. The mostpopular is the flattened pancake-like bread; ‘injera’.Apart from its food value, tef is used to make home-brewed local beer.This potential has drawn interest in commercial breweries and the use oftef grain as a malt has been recently investigated4,5.

In Ethiopia, mixing tef with other cereals is not uncommon. In urbanareas this practice is increasingly becoming the norm. Tef seeds can bemixed with rice, sorghum, corn, and sometimes with wheat for makinginjera. As a result, except in individual households most of therestaurants and hotels both in Ethiopia and abroad serve injera mixedwith either of the aforementioned cereals. One of the major reasons formixing is the higher price of tef per kilogram as compared to othercereals. There is a high demand for tef products both in Ethiopia andoutside and production is still struggling to keep up. To address this gap,conventional breeding work generated several high yielding varietiesthat are under commercial production. However, low productivity is stilla problem, so conventional tef breeding is being supported withadvanced approaches.

Breeding tefDue to its importance as a food and feed crop, tef has been the focus ofscientific research since the early 90s. Historically, the objective has been

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Tef food products(a) In EthiopiaInjera: A flat, pancake-like bread typical of Ethiopian cuisine. The main

components of injera are the flour, salt, water, and yeast starter used for

fermentation. Injera can have two main colours (white and brown) owing to

the colour of the flour. Since the early days, white injera has been

preferentially consumed by urban people while brown seeded tef is popular

in rural and suburban areas.

Chechebsa: Flattened bread chopped into small pieces marinated with

spiced and herbed butter. It is widely consumed in rural areas and has now

become popular in urban areas.

Anebabero: Flattened bread overlaid with two to three individual circular

breads. Each layer is generously coated with locally prepared spiced and

herbed butter and is popular in most areas of Ethiopia.

Shekeka: Roasted brown tef flour marinated with herbed and spiced butter.

It is popular in south Ethiopia, especially in the Bale and Arsi areas.

Kita: A tiny flat bread similar to Indian chapatti, mostly served at traditional

coffee ceremonies.

(b) General food productsThese food items are more common in Europe and the USA and include

baked foods such as cookies, cakes, crackers, bread, pancakes, muffins

and pasta.

Table 1: Comparison of nutritional composition among major cereals (per 100g grain). Adapted from the United States Department of Agriculture,National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference Release 27. URL: http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods

Item Unit Tef Wheat Rice Barley Millet

Proximates

Energy Kcal 367.00 337.00 370.00 352.00 378.00

Protein g 13.30 14.54 6.81 9.91 11.02

Fat g 2.38 2.13 0.55 1.16 4.22

Carbohydrate g 73.13 70.11 81.68 77.72 72.85

Fiber g 8.00 11.10 2.80 15.60 8.50

Minerals

Calcium mg 180.00 22.00 11.00 29.00 8.00

Iron mg 7.63 3.77 1.60 2.50 3.01

Magnesium mg 184.00 130.00 23.00 79.00 114.00

Phosphorus mg 429.00 364.00 71.00 221.00 285.00

Potassium mg 427.00 403.00 77.00 280.00 195.00

Sodium mg 12.00 5.00 7.00 9.00 5.00

Amino acids

Alanine g 0.75 0.54 0.40 0.39 0.99

Arginine g 0.52 0.70 0.57 0.50 0.38

Aspartic acid g 0.82 0.80 0.64 0.62 0.73

Cystine g 0.24 0.31 0.14 0.22 0.21

Glutamic acid g 3.35 4.84 1.33 2.59 2.40

Glycine g 0.48 0.58 0.31 0.36 0.29

Histidine g 0.30 0.38 0.16 0.22 0.24

Isoleucine g 0.50 0.57 0.29 0.36 0.47

Leucine g 1.07 1.11 0.56 0.67 1.40

Lysine g 0.38 0.42 0.25 0.37 0.21

Methionine g 0.43 0.25 0.16 0.19 0.22

Phenylalanine g 0.70 0.77 0.36 0.56 0.58

Proline g 0.66 1.59 0.32 1.18 0.88

Serine g 0.62 0.76 0.36 0.42 0.64

Threonine g 0.51 0.44 0.24 0.34 0.35

Tryptophan g 0.14 0.13 0.08 0.17 0.12

Tyrosine g 0.46 0.35 0.23 0.28 0.34

Valine g 0.69 0.69 0.42 0.49 0.58

Injera is a flat, pancake-like bread and a stable of Ethiopian cuisine

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improving productivity, which was 0.8t/ha in 20026. So far, theimprovement work has bred varieties which are taller, mature earlier andproduce higher yields than the locally adapted landraces. Theseimproved varieties were adopted by farmers and some are still underproduction. Now, the average national yield of tef has doubled but is stillfar below than that from corn and wheat7. The variety development andadoption process brought some of the weak (inherent) traits of thesevarieties to light. The tall and vigorous growth characteristics gainedthrough rigorous selection made the plants susceptible to lodging,during which the panicle bearing plant is displaced to the groundthereby leading to yield loss and problematic harvesting. This was atimely call for tef breeders who then started to investigate the tef genepool in the hunt for genotypes that are potentially lodging tolerant.

However, breeding for lodging tolerance through conventionalapproaches have so far proved ineffective. This serves as a rationale toutilise advanced approaches to better understand the crop at amolecular level and to provide tools to support conventional tefbreeding. Thanks to the handful of genomic studies made in the past twodecades8, we have a much better understanding of tef and its genome.Here at the Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Switzerland,using ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) based mutation, we developed teflines that are shorter than the original parental line. These mutant lineswere crossed with popular varieties and the resulting progenies arebeing field tested in Ethiopia9.

Transgenic approachesAttempts to improve tef through transgene technology are in the earlystages. Genetic modification through the introgression of foreign geneticmaterial requires a stable and genetically reproducible transformationprotocol which is non-existent for tef. At the moment, we are using non-transgenic approaches including TILLING (Targeting Induced LocalLesions in Genomes); and next-generation sequencing-basedapproaches such as Genotyping by Sequencing (GBS), Restriction SiteAssociated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) and MutMap.

Owing to its benefits as a healthy food alternative and as an excellentfeed for livestock there is a growing demand on the international market for tef. Private companies in Europe and the USA are starting toproduce tef in large scale and sell it to individual buyers or wholesaleretailers. Few companies have patent right on tef processing while others have obtained plant breeders rights for the varieties they have developed. However, while Ethiopia holds the right to tef geneticresources and their access, the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits oftheir use is still poorly understood and abused. With internationalconventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in place,Ethiopia should cautiously engage in future genetic resource access andbenefit sharing agreements.

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1. Maki, M, et al., Prevalence of celiac disease among children in Finland. New England Journal ofMedicine, 2003. 348(25): p. 2517-2524.

2. Spaenij-Dekking, L, Kooy-Winkelaar, Y, Koning, F. The Ethiopian cereal tef in celiac disease.The New England journal of medicine, 2005. 353(16): p. 1748-9.

3. Cannarozzi, G, et al., Genome and transcriptome sequencing identifies breeding targets in theorphan crop tef (Eragrostis tef). BMC genomics, 2014. 15.

4. Gebremariam, MM, Zarnkow, M, Becker, T. Effect of teff (Eragrostis tef) variety and storage onmalt quality attributes. Journal of the Institute of Brewing, 2013. 119(1-2): p. 64-70.

5. Gebremariam, MM, Zarnkow, M, Becker, T. Thermal stability of starch degrading enzymes ofteff (Eragrostis tef) malt during isothermal mashing. Process Biochemistry, 2013. 48(12):p. 1928-1932.

6. CSA, Agricultural Sample Survey for 2001/2002; Central Statistial Agency (CSA), Addis Ababa,Ethiopia. 2002.

7. CSA, Agricultural Sample Survey for 2013/14, in Statistical Bulletin 532. 2014: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

8. Girma, D, Assefa, K, Chanyalew, S, Cannarozzi, G, Kuhlemeier, C, Tadele, Z. The origins andprogress of genomics research on Tef (Eragrostis tef). Plant Biotechnology Journal, 2014.12(5): p. 534-540.

9. Tadele, Z. Tef Improvement Project: harnessing genetic and genomic tools to boostproductivity. In: Achievements and Prospects of Tef Improvement; Proceedings of the SecondInternational Tef Workshop, November 7-9, 2011, Debre Zeit, Ethiopia, ed. Assefa, K,Chanyalew, S, Tadele, Z. 2013, Bern, Switzerland: EIAR-University of Bern; pp333-342. URL: http://www.ips.unibe.ch/unibe/philnat/biology/botany/content/e6537/e546913/tef_improvement.pdf.

References

Dejene Girma holds a Master’s degree in Molecular PlantBiotechnology and a Postgraduate Diploma in Biosafety inMolecular Plant Biotechnology from Gent University, Belgium. Currently he is a PhD student at the University of Bern, Switzerland and his main research topic is focused on understanding the tef genome using next genera-tion sequencing.

Kebebew Assefa holds a Master’s degree in Agronomy fromHaramaya University of Agriculture in Ethiopia and a Doctoratedegree in Plant Breeding and Genetics from the SwedishUniversity of Agricultural Sciences. Currently, he is SeniorResearcher at the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Researchand the National Coordinator of the Tef Research Program. Hehas played a key role in the development of improved tef

cultivars in Ethiopia and training research personnel.

Zerihun Tadele holds a Master’s degree in Agronomy fromHaramaya University of Agriculture in Ethiopia and a Doctoratedegree in Molecular Biology from the University of Basel inSwitzerland. At the present time, he is the Project Leader of the Tef Improvement Project at the University of Bern inSwitzerland. His research focuses on the development anddissemination of improved tef cultivars with desirableagronomic and nutritional traits.

About the Authors

A variety of traditional Ethiopian foods including alicha, kitfo and wot, served on injera

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