ICRAF’s project and publication on trees with antimalarial properties has made it into the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. Kudos indeed. UnLike that article, fortunately, the ICRAF publication is not behind a paywall. The project has been much in the news, and rightly so, but at least one report is inaccurate in suggesting that ICRAF are planning a major effort on ex situ conservation of antimalarial trees. This is how The Star entitled its article when the book was launched: “ICRAF starts trees gene bank project in Nairobi.” And this was their lede:
A project to document genetic properties of more than 3,000 forest trees across the continent has started in Nairobi.
In fact, ICRAF already has a genebank, of about 200 species, and there are no plans to either expand that to 3000 species or specifically focus on collecting antimalarials in the future. According to our sources, The Star correspondent may simply have conflated the malaria book project with the results of a recent meeting at ICRAF on the State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources.
LATER: My sincere apologies to The Lancet. That paper is NOT behind a paywall. You just need to register. Which takes a bit of time and effort but does not involve the exchange of currency. Sorry!
