Most people have probably heard of Breadfruit without realizing it. The "Mutiny on the Bounty" movies were based on historical voyage to acquire Breadfruit plants from Tahiti and carry them to the British West Indies, where it was thought that Breadfruit would provide cheap food for the slaves on the sugar plantations - it did.
Breadfruit supposedly it tastes like a mix of potato and fresh baked bread when cooked. It has one of the highest food production rates of any crop (tons per acre), but it produces a few fruit at a time (about 100-200 very large fruit every year) spread throughout the year. This makes it ideal as a subsistence crop and is part of reason why trees are now planted all over the tropics, but it makes it quite hard to turn into a commercial crop (where a distinct main harvest season is what is wanted). In recent years, new cultivars are beginning to change this with 1-2 main crop cycles in addition to the penny-packets all year long.
Teff is a grain from Ethiopia. It has the smallest seeds of any grain crop (sharpened pencil-head small). It is both drought- and wet-tolerant and will produce a usable crop in areas where it is adapated during seasons where nothing else will. It is a major subsistence food in East Africa. But it has major problems for commercial growers: it produces best only at higher elevations (like the Ethiopian Highlands were it originated), it requires an extended period of 12-hour sunlight per day to set grain, and its small seeds require some specialized processing. It is now available to a limited extent in the USA (some small-scale production in southern Idaho and Nevada) and sold here by some specialized firms likes Bob's Red Mill. I like it a lot as a hot breakfast cereal (boil grains for a few minutes and add some minimal flavoring - by itself with no flavoring it tastes a lot like malt-0-meal).
Fonio is a generic name for two species of grain from West Africa. These are very small grains in the millet family. They are extremely drought tolerant and are thus planted extensively across the Sahel (the belt of Africa just south of the Saharan desert where droughts are common). But its yield per acre is small (newer strains are increasing this) and it requires specialized processing as the husk on the small grain is quite difficult to get off the grain (and the European Union gave a Patent to a Dutch Firm for the process that makes dehusking easier so that drives up costs too). It also is now being grown in small quantities in the USA and sold here by some specialty firms (Bob's Red Mill again for one).
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