Pretty Poison

Bumping along in a Land Rover an hour’s drive outside Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Regassa Feyissa, former director of Ethiopia’s national genebank, waved his arm towards the fields. “Everything you’ll see today that’s green is lathyrus”. It was literally true.

What? Never heard of lathyrus?

In the words of Mahmoud Solh, Director-General of the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), lathyrus is a “crop for all seasons”. It is a traditional food of more than 100 million people in drought-prone areas of South Asia and Africa.

Lathyrus is also known as “grass pea”. A beautiful little plant with white, pink or blue flowers, one of its numerous species is even sold in the U.S. and elsewhere as an ornamental – the sweet pea. But you won’t find it amidst the vegetables in a supermarket.

Lathyrus is as tough as it is beautiful. It survives drought better than just about anything. When every other food crop shrivels up and dies, lathyrus persists producing peas in a pod that resembles the sugar snap pea. It also survives floods. It takes heat, tolerates cold and thrives in incredibly poor soil. It wards off pests and diseases and even controls some weeds. With twice the protein by weight of wheat, lathyrus is nutritious. It’s tasty too, eaten fresh (I tried some with Regassa in the field), roasted, made into a sauce, or ground into flour for baking.

The crop doubles as forage for animals and, because it is a legume, serves to enrich the soil with nitrogen. It doesn’t need fertilizer.

The Dark Side

Lathyrus is a food for the poorest of the poor. It is a life-saver. In a severe drought, it can be the only food available. Since the poor cannot buy their way out of starvation, they eat what they have - lathyrus. Therein lies the problem. Lathyrus offers a “Hobson’s Choice”, a choice that is no choice at all.

Grown for thousands of years, its dark side has been known at least for 2400 years. Hippocrates even noted it. Lathyrus contains a powerful neurotoxin that becomes doubly concentrated in drought conditions. Eaten in quantity and over time, the toxin causes paralysis in the legs - lathyrism. The paralysis is permanent and irreversible. Some of the poison can be leached out if the peas are soaked or boiled in water, but water is in short supply in a drought. And water used for leaching cannot be drunk afterwards.

In regions where lathyrus grows, the poor can face the most difficult of choices – starve or become paralyzed.

The poor know what will happen. But what can they do?

Victims of lathyrism, “crawlers”, are numerous among the poor in Ethiopia, India, Bangladesh and Nepal where the affliction remains a present threat. One study in Ethiopia revealed an incidence of 7.5 cases per 1000 in the population of one area. An epidemic in the 1970s left 1% of the population permanently paralyzed in the Gondar region.

Epidemics have been frequent throughout history touching developing and developed countries alike, including Afghanistan, Algeria, China, France, Germany, Italy Russia, Syria, and post-war Spain. An earlier epidemic during Spain’s war of independence from Napoleon inspired a drawing of its victims by Goya: “Thanks to the Grasspea Flour.” An outbreak in a German concentration camp in the Ukraine during World War II affected 60% of its inmates.

Understandably, many countries over the years have made lathyrus cultivation illegal. But this approach has never worked. The poor continue to grow it for obvious reasons.

Their fate could be worsening. Climate change is predicted to affect marginal agricultural areas and poor people in Africa and Asia the most, increasing incidents of both droughts and floods. Occasions when the world’s poorest people, the lathyrus eaters, will be confronted with one of the world’s most awful choices, will multiply. Inevitably, the crop will compound the problem unless it becomes part of the solution.

Plant breeders at ICARDA, at Australia’s Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture (CLIMA), and in India’s national agricultural research program are tapping major lathyrus collections at ICARDA and elsewhere to produce new varieties that retain the considerable positive attributes of the crop while eliminating the dangerous neurotoxin. Already the scientists are tasting success. With perseverance and sufficient diversity with which to work, they will transform lathyrus into a potent ally of the poor in hard times and a more valuable crop in good times.

After 2000 years as poison, lathyrus is poised to become antidote.