From contacts that we’ve had with the Worldwatch Institute in Washington – USA we’ve learned that Celosia argentea is an excellent crop to fight the parasite weed “Striga” ( witches weed ) in tropical countries. That weed can infect the bottom for 10 years and kill important food crops like sorghum, wheat, sugarcane and corn. Somehow Celosia can “clean up” the bottom and research is running now to find out why. An extra advantage is that the grown Celosia plants can at the same time be used as a vegetable, eaten raw ( the leaves ) or cooked ( the leaves and the stems e.g. in soup ). In Africa the crop is very popular and is called “Spinach of Lagos”
We’ve supported the Worldwatch help program called “Nourishing the world” for the poor countries with our expertise about technical growing instructions and other relevant information. Information about the dangerous weed “Striga” can be found on Wikipedia. In that article Celosia is mentioned as the “Striga chaser”, in the item about “trap cropping’.
>> > See the striga page on Wikipedia.
October 2015 – Addition : We,ve written an extended article about Striga treatment and the research we’ve done to fight that dangerous parasite weed on the page “Growing info” of this site. Very interesting to read !
Link >> > Striga treatment on page “Growing info”