April 1998: Issue 13

Plant Information for NE Brazil


A £1.85 million award from the UK's Department for International Development (DfID, formerly ODA) will, over the next five years, fund the creation of a Plant Information Service for Northeast Brazil as part of the 'Plantas do Nordeste' (PNE) programme. This new initiative will be managed by Dr Everardo Sampaio of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and will have three inter-dependent units.

A PNE Plant Information Centre will be based in UFPE, Recife, and run by Eduardo Dalcin. It will house a library and offer technical guidance to PNE's projects and partners so that the results of their research are gathered more effectively and in a co-ordinated manner. The Centre will combine research data with information from the literature and from Kew into thematic databases (e.g. 'Forage plants') which it will use to offer information services to conservation and planning agencies and to technical audiences throughout the region.

A second unit is based in AS-PTA (an alternative agricultural development NGO in Recife) and run by Pablo Sidersky and Marcelino de Souza. It is implementing an extension programme and setting up pilot projects with real practical benefits in rural communities where AS-PTA and partner NGOs already work. Its aim is to multiply the benefits of PNE through a network of grass roots organisations.

A third unit, at Kew, will repatriate information about Brazilian plants from the databases and collections here to the Plant Information Centre in Brazil. Clive Beale has been appointed as the Information Repatriation Officer in this unit based in Kew's PNE secretariat, co-ordinated by Amélia Baracat in the Centre for Economic Botany (CEB).

Dr Bob Allkin, who has been involved with PNE since its inception, will be seconded from Kew to Brazil for four years as a member of DfID's Technical Co-operation staff.

Contact: Clive Beale (0181-332 5710)

What is 'Plantas do Nordeste' (PNE)?

PNE is an Anglo-Brazilian programme in the poor, semi-arid NE region of Brazil. Scientists, studying biodiversity, work with grass roots organisations, that are closely linked to local communities, to provide information on how native plant resources can be better used and managed sustainably. Here, a woman in Ceará State is making hats from leaves of Copernicia prunifera, a local palm grown for its edible wax (used, for example, in chocolate manufacture). PNE's motto is 'Local Plants for Local People'.


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