Academia Sinica's Hsing Yue-ie team conducts transnational research, unveiling the origins of Taiwan oil millet, with hopes that the "Taiwan orphan" will eliminate global hunger

(Continued from previous article) Specializing in rice genomics research, having cracked the mystery of the origins of Penglai rice, and identifying the migration paths of Austronesian-speaking peoples, Hsing Yue-ie, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, has in recent years focused her research on upland dryland rice, which led to the incidental discovery of Taiwan oil millet, a "super crop" acclaimed by the international academic community. "Upstream and Downstream" interviewed this rigorous scholar, who has won the Taiwan-France Science and Technology Award, to discuss the past, present and future of Taiwan oil millet.

Oil millet is high-yielding, drought-tolerant and requires no additional fertilizer

As the effects of climate and environmental change have already swept across the globe, Hsing Yue-ie begins by discussing corn: "A few years ago, corn was found to be usable as an energy crop, which reduced the yield available for human consumption. As a result, many countries experienced food shortages -- for example, Mexico, which is closer to US corn-producing areas. We no longer dare to use corn primarily for bioenergy; instead, we must first feed people. Issues related to food security are the key topic that must be considered first."

Hsing Yue-ie then held out her hand and counted: "The world's most important crops can be counted on five fingers -- rice, wheat, corn and high-yielding cassava. Even sorghum doesn't make the list. But these crops all require a lot of water, need herbicides, disease and pest resistance, and absolutely require irrigation and fertilizer to produce sufficient yields."

After discovering oil millet, in order to confirm its various characteristics, Hsing Yue-ie's team research assistant Hsu Tzu-fu asked indigenous people to grow it using traditional methods. Apart from providing water during germination, no irrigation was carried out at other times. The tiny seedlings planted in the soil received no fertilizer, no pesticides and no herbicides, "but when oil millet is young, its competitiveness is inferior to weeds, so when it is tender it needs weeding and thinning."

Listening to Hsing Yue-ie describe oil millet's growing conditions, it seems somewhat similar to red quinoa. She thought for a moment and said: "Many indigenous crops are like this. Because there isn't that much water resources, apart from upland dryland rice, the other crops they have been able to cultivate long-term don't need much water."

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