It's Ted talks daily Amelie's Hugh Crop scientist Cedric Habyarimana is a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and a series of refugee camps following his escape from his country.

It taught him hard lessons about food insecurity, which he's now using to solve hunger in his Ted 20-20 talk. He shares the almost magic power of quinoa that will make you appreciate this humble grain far more.

Like so many of you, when I'm hungry, I open the fridge and get myself something to eat anytime I want. This is something most of us who live in the developed country don't think much about. However, it is a luxury that I didn't think I would ever have in my life when I lived in a refugee camp in Tanzania 23 years ago or even seven years ago when I was living in my home country of Rwanda before I moved to the USA, I was only seven years old when my home country of Rwanda went through the tragedy of the genocide that took so many lives.

And they make us flee the country. And we became refugees back in a refugee camp to it, to life. It was a survival. I saw a lot of people dying from disease, poor sanitation, hunger, food became a rare commodity. There were bad days. My family and I would survive on the leaves and the grasses from the forest. There were also worse times when we would go two or three days without anything to eat at all, only drinking water from the swamp after three years in a refugee camp.

We decide to return to Rwanda and our struggle with the food continued. However, farming proved to be the only reliable source of food that our food lacked the nutritional diversity. And we continue to depend on food assistance from the United Nations World Food Program. To balance our diet is till today, more than 70 percent of Rwandans. They work in agriculture sector, but malnutrition and stunting remain rampant. I came to realize that food insecurity and malnutrition were not happening because people are not finding enough.

It does, because people are not finding the right quotes. I eventually left Rwanda and moved to the USA for graduate school and discovered the possible solution to that problem and the solution is Kinnon. Quinoa is indigenous to the Indian regions of South America, in countries like Bolivia, Peru, and it's is very well known for its powerhouse nutrient and the crop has all the attention as it's making it a complete protein. But unfortunately, quinoa is not cultivated as much in different parts of the world.

In Rwanda, for example, beans are the only thing that kept so many of us alive during those times of hunger and starvation. As a matter of fact, one is the number one binge consuming country in the world per capita in this part of Africa. Beans are one of the only crops that provide immediate food source because you can eat beans at every stage of growth. We ate beans, leaves and green beans before harvest. Unfortunately, you cannot cultivate beans in the same field season after season.

You need to ensure there is regular rotation to avoid disease and pests like beans. Farmers can enjoy the nutritious quinoa leaves where the beans are considered nutritious, has far more micronutrients, and Quemoy can make many different food products and drinks than beans. In 2015, alongside my research team to Washington University, we introduced in Rwanda for the first time. We tested 20 varieties of quinoa to see that the ability in the three ecological zones of Rwanda. And the results were astonishing among the 20 varieties we tested, 15 of them showed the potential to grow where and one does climate.

And later we started on the farmers program would give those potential varieties to farmers to go in their farm and community. We started with 12 farmers and three years later, we are now working with around five hundred farmers, including my mother, who is locally known as the King of quinoa, because of her work in helping other farmers adopted this crop. We give them seeds showing them how to grow it and how to cook it. And farmers are pretty creative coming up with the recipes of their own.

And we've started seeing remarkable changes in their lives, including success stories that many of them can now have access to nutritious food three times a day. I'd like to note that quinoa is not meant to interrupt other crops. We introduced quinoa as a supplement to create overall health and nutrition, rounding out the diet to combat chronic malnutrition. We've started this mother with quinoa in Rwanda, but it can be replicated in different countries experiencing hunger and malnutrition. About one in nine people in the world, they suffer from chronic malnutrition.

We have started a research collaboration with institution in countries like Kenya, Malawi, Uganda and other countries experiencing hunger and malnutrition. And Keino isn't the only magic. There are several crops with high adaptability and nutritional value. Crops like millet, sorghum, fonio, barley ought to name a few, these crops have had stability and respond well to climate change. You can grow this much crops in different parts of the world, bridging the gap so that there is accessible, nutritious food for everyone.

I know how it feels to be hungry. I've been there. And they know how it feels to be noticed, because I've been there to introduce Incorrupt with high biodiversity, adaptability and nutritional value will play an important role in creating food security, seeds, sovereignity and sustainable production in communities and countries that are experiencing hunger and malnutrition. Having nutritious food should not be a so there is a need to ensure that there is accessible and affordable, nutritious food for everyone and this is a step towards making it a reality.

Thank you. Ted Talks Daily, is hosted by Elise Hu and produced by Ted theme music is from Allison Layton Brown. In our mixer is Christopher Fazi Bogon.

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