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INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH CENTRE

Box 8500, Ottawa, Canada, K1G 3H9 • Telephone (613) 996-2321
•Cable: RECENTRE •Telex: 053-3753

Words: 880 approx"

UNDEREXPLOITED PLANTS HOLD PROMISE FOR TROPICS

by MICHELLE HIBLER

What tropical plant has a trunk that produces a taro-like starch, yields
pleasant tasting fruit with a high vitamin C content and from which can be extracted
an edible oil containing more vitamin A than either carrots or spinach, and whose
kernels contain over 50 percent edible oil? It's the buriti palm, recently recognized
by an international panel of scientists as an underexploited tropical plant with
considerable nutritive and economic potential for tropical areas.
From this plant, growing by the millions throughout the Amazon basin,
Venezuela and the Guianas, could also be produced wine, timber, cork and industrial
fiber for twine, sacking, nets and hammocks. The shoots can also be harvested to
provide "hearts of palm" for the luxury food market"
The buriti palm is one of 36 plants cereal crops, edible roots and tubers,
vegetables, oil seeds,forage crops and others identified in a report published by
~ the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) as having considerable potential for
improving the quality of life in tropical areaso
Some of these plants -- the Southeast Asian fruit durian and naranjilla,
the golden fruit of the Andes -- are already known and used. But although they appear
in the market places of certain regions, little research has been devoted to improving
strains and horticultural practices or to introducing them to new tropical areas where
they could complement existing crops"
Other plants are virtually unknown. Channel millet, for example, grows
almost exclusively in the channel country of inland Australia where it is recognized
as a palatable, nutritious, productive fodder grass. A single deep watering at
planting is sufficient for the plant to reach maturity. Although it has never been
'() used directly by man or considered for cultivation, the panel considers that it could
become an important fodder and grain crop for dryland farming in arid regions with
sporadic rainfall.
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 underexploited plants ... 2

Most of the plants listed have multiple properties enabling several useful
products to be obtained from them. None is perhaps as striking as the winged bean, a
,~ high-yielding tropical legume with a multitude of exceptionally large nitrogen-fixing
nodules that eliminate the need for nitrogen fertilizers. Its edible pods, seeds
and leaves contain unusually high protein levels as do its abundant tuberous roots
that can be cooked and eaten like potatoes. Fran the seeds can also be extracted an
edible oil. Presently grown only in Papua New Guinea and some parts of Southeast Asia,
the winged bean holds considerable pranise for wet tropical areas in Africa, Latin
America and Asia. 11
With research 11 , says the report, 11
it could perhaps become one
of the best sources of usable protein in the tropics 11 •
As the prospects of food shortages becane more acute, research into the
lesser known plant species becomes a priority. Of the close to 3 000 plant species
used by man as food throughout history, some 150 have been grown conmercially. Today,
however, most people in the world are fed by only about 20 crops -- cereals such as
wheat, rice, maize, millet and sorghum; root crops such as potatoes, sweet potato and
cassava; legumes such as peas, beans, peanuts and soybeans; sugar cane, sugar beet,
coconuts and bananas. 11
These plants 11 , says the report on underexploited tropical
plants, 11 are the main bulwark between mankind and starvation. It's a very small
bas ti on. 11
Although minor plant species may possess equal merit to the world s staple 1

food crops they have generally been disregarded by researchers. Cultivation and
research priorities in tropical agriculture, based on consumer demands in European
countries during the colonial era, have changed little since independance. Barley for
~ example, largely supplanted the native grain quinua in the high Andes despite quinua 1 s
hardiness and superior protein content. Now unknown outside the highlands of Bolivia,
Chile, Ecuador and Peru where it is used in soups and ground into flour, quinua
could become a valuable food source in highland areas where protein deficiency is a
serious problem.
Some tropical plants are now benefitting from research: tamarugo, a leguminous
tree used as forage in salt devastated areas of Chile, was introduced to the Canary
Islands on an experimental basis in 1973; plantations of jojoba, a hardy shrub
producing a liquid wax with impressive industrial potential, have been established in
Israel; the Arid Lands Agricultural Development Institute in Lebanon is presently
attempting to hybridize varieties of buffalo gourd from which edible oil and starch
~ can be obtained. If the potential of these plants is to be realized, however, a
massive research effort is needed.

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underexploited plantso.o3

As a first step to the development and protection of these plants, some of

which are in danger of extinction, the NAS report reconmends the preservation of germ
plasm and the establishment of genetic resource stations -- botanic gardens, field
stations and habitat reserves -- as were proposed by the 1973 Stockholm Conference
on the Human Environment. Facilities for training and research are also urgently
needed~

The report calls for international support for a system of horticultural

facilities in tropical an:t subtropical countries to pursue agronomic research and
extension on lesser known indigenous or newly-introduced specieso Given concentrated
research, the scientists believe that many underexploited plants could follow the
developmental course of the soybean which has become a staple food plant where 50 years
ago it was considered an oddity.

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