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Centre for Underutilised Crops (CUC)
at University of Southampton

The Centre’s mission is to improve human food security, nutrition and economic welfare through the development and sustainable use of the biological diversity of underutilised crops.

The strategic aims of the CUC are to:

Develop new and underutilised crops and to foster adoption to the benefit of both the producers within sustainable production systems and consumers in local, regional and international markets;
Conserve global biodiversity through its sustainable use.

Areas of particular research interest include:

Improving value chains for underutilised crops
Improving value chains for underutilised crops to contribute to poverty alleviation of producers, processors and traders in an environmentally sustainable manner
Adaptation to environmental change using underutilised crops
- Characterising and evaluating genetic diversity for drought resistance and climatic variation, poor soils
- Phytoremediation of degraded ecosystems
Mitigation of climate change using underutilised crops
- Carbon sequestration
- Bioenergy
Domestication and the development of sustainable cropping systems in diverse agro-ecosystems
- What triggers the transition from wild-harvested to domesticated?
- What are the relative benefits and advantages of wild-harvesting versus domestication and how can each system and the transition from one to the other best be supported?
Community-based management of wild-harvested natural resources
Research methods and policy initiatives for underutilised crops
Research methods and policy initiatives in support of the livelihood role of underutilised species and the ecosystems which they grow

Researching plants with potential