Category: Neglected species

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Useful plants of tropical Africa databased

PROTA is an international, not-for-profit foundation. It intends to synthesize the dispersed information on the approximately 7,000 useful plants of Tropical Africa and to provide wide access to the information through Webdatabases, Books, CD-Rom’s and Special Products.

I knew that, but hadn’t checked out progress on the centrepiece database in a while. Until today. I couldn’t get the “word wheel” thing to work, whatever that is, but the search function seems to work fine and the actual content is great. Now, why not link to GBIF?

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Goji lovers threaten devastation

The UK government is warning that illegal imports of goji (Lycium barbarum) plants threatens commercial potato and tomato crops with destruction. Goji, tomato and potato are all members of the family Solanaceae, and apparently “bugs” could come in on the clandestine gojis. According to one advisor, “the retail value of British tomato production is £150m, and potatoes are worth more than that, so the size of the industry that is under threat is pretty massive. If some bugs were to arrive here, they would be devastating.”

The Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate destroyed my entire stock of pepino (Solanum muricatum) in a former life because of some viral threat, even though the plants they confiscated initially tested negative. It’s easy to think that these “invading pests and diseases” threats are just crying wolf, but all the evidence suggests that intensive plantings are indeed very vulnerable. Of course, why that should be so is another matter …

I’m not sure how the UK government plans to sniff out every goji plant, but Sir Mick Jagger and Kate Moss, goji enthusiasts, presumably have plans to cope. Let’s hope proposed imports get up to speed soon, and don’t carry the bugs.

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Growing greens in Kenya

The relationship between food, nutrition and health is what is missing in most of Kenya’s homes and even at the national level even when they talk of food security.

Helen Murangi, whose family farms 11 hectares near Kiringa in Kenya, grows all kinds of greens, and stresses their value for good nutrition and as a cash crop.

Murangiri farm has with time come to classify weeds into good weeds, that are now grown intentionally for food and human medicine and the other weeds from which the farm derives its pesticides and herbicides needs. In the class of ‘good weeds’ are such common plants as the Black jerk, Jute (mlenda in Swahili), or murere in Luhya, Kisii), ground nuts, Amaranths, Spider Plant (thangeti in Kikuyu, chiisaka in Luhya, a lot-dek in Luo, saget in Kalenjin), Pumpkin, Crotolaria, Solanum, the various Aloe specie among many others.

According to Helen, what she earns from her small portions of these good weeds combined earns her far more that what she gets from the 7 hecteres she had dedicated to mangos. Interestingly enough, every one in Murangiri’s home is converse with the value of everything that occupies their farm’s space and can explain in detail about each plant and crop—from the biological name, local name, its usefulness etc.

Lots more from the horse’s mouth, as it were, at Africa Science News Service.

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Nibbles: Desert garden, Funding, Vegetables, Communication, Ecosystem services, Bees, Native grasses, Soil, Raspberries, Ancient ag trade, Soybeans, Ag origins