Drylands: Africa
Recent Achievements
Collections (2001-2005)
In this period we increased our holdings of seed/species collected by: 132 collections from Botswana; 497 from Madagascar; 166 from Malawi; 179 from Namibia; 1,271 from South Africa.
A DNA bank was set up at the South African National Biodiversity Institute; 4,000 new DNA samples (primarily Cape) were banked and duplicated between South Africa (SANBI) and Kew; students and staff were trained in DNA banking and molecular phylogenetics.
4,000 herbarium specimens were collected on thirty field trips; they were named and added to our collections, and duplicates of these were sent to our host countries.
14,000 herbarium specimens, sent to us for identification by a wide range of institutes and individuals, were named and incorporated into our collections.
Baseline Plant Diversity Research (2001-2005)
48 Flora parts have been published, with a total of 2,964 species; significant progress has been made allocating all outstanding groups to experts to complete the writing up, editing, and publishing. There is increasing involvement of East African authors, either as author or co-author. Flora Zambesiaca is now online, and we are working to do the same for the Flora of Tropical East Africa.
Eighty-three new species have been published for this period.
The 17th AETFAT Congress Proceedings were edited and will be published by Kew, with approximately 60 articles and over 800 pages.
Continental revisions have now been completed for most African genera in the tribe Asclepiadeae (Apocynaceae), covering almost all the diversity in tropical Africa.
Comparative Plant Biology (2001-2005)
A phylogeny for Tribe Ocimeae (Lamiaceae) was created, which involved two African PhD’s.
The uses of Plectranthus from literature were mapped onto the phylogeny to explore the predictive power of phylogeny and to improve the understanding of taxonomic distribution of uses.
One letter published in Science, entitled A Plea for DNA Banking, plus six other papers in journals with IF>2.
Sustainable Utilisation of Plant Resources (2001-2005)
SEPASAL: Completion of first release of SEPASAL Global Editing software enabling remote data contributions and editing. SEPASAL regional nodes established in Kenya (2002) and Namibia (2004) and local staff fully trained in use of SEPASAL database and Taxonomic Database Working Group (TDWG) data recording standards. More than 800 African species substantially updated on SEPASAL by end of 2005. Significant increase in dissemination of SEPASAL data via the internet (2005 download average of 102 species data sheets per month; an average of 398 searches per month) and via ePIC (75,317 queries in 2003; 97,807 in 2004; 133,519 in 2005; and over 440,00 in the first nine months of 2006). Increased use of SEPASAL in ‘node’ countries, for example by research institutions, governmental agencies, development agencies, and NGOs.
African Wild Harvest: started in 2002 to promote the sustainable use of traditional and wild food plants for diet diversification and improved nutrition, through conservation of indigenous knowledge. Agreement signed between National Museums of Kenya (NMK) and Kew in March 2005. Agreements with two rural communities in western Kenya were finalised in September 2005 to work with them in conserving their indigenous knowledge and to promote sustainable use of their traditional food plants.
PROTA: Kew became a collaborating partner of the PROTA Foundation in 2000 and hosts the UK Country Office. PROTA is an international programme co-ordinated by Wageningen University, The Netherlands concerned with documenting the useful flora of tropical Africa. Kew has provided extensive editorial input has been provided for the PROTA Handbooks, namely: Associate Editorship for the PROTA Precursor (2002) and Medicinal Plants (2005) volumes; and authors for several species review articles. Over 1,500 bibliographic records of ‘grey’ literature have been collected UK-wide for the PROTA Databank and directories of UK-based experts and organisations with African foci compiled.
Ethnobotanical data about the traditional uses of plants for the treatment of diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and diabetes as well as general medicinal uses were collected in Tunisia, Kenya and Ghana. Collating and studying the chemistry and activity of these species has provided a framework for PhD projects for students in these countries to develop their knowledge about the diversity of uses of their flora and the importance of conserving traditional knowledge as well as biodiversity. Between 2000 and 2005 a total of 187 different species have been studied.
Conservation and Environmental Monitoring (2001-2005)
Herbarium collections and Geographic Information Systems employed to pioneer use of monographic data for predicting conservation assessments. Such use is now becoming more widespread, for instance at the 2006 Dar es Salaam workshop where 150 Red List conservation assessments were made
The Darwin Initiative project on DNA banking, phylogeny and conservation of the South African flora, for which funding was secured in 2003, enables identification of areas of high priority for conservation.