Drylands: Africa
Future Plans
Collections (2006 onwards)
We aim to continue the collection of herbarium specimens to cover gaps in taxonomy and geographical coverage, concentrating on areas of high conservation interest.
Coverage of the DNA bank will be extended to include all South African genera.
Continue to make seed collections in collaboration with partners in dryland countries (including Burkina Faso and Mali), of which at least 25% concern endangered, endemic or economically important species.
Baseline Plant Diversity Research (2006 onwards)
A main aim is to complete both the FTEA and FZ Flora projects; FTEA by 2008, FZ by a 2010.
Incorporate newly published FZ volumes to the existing e-floras resource and make the whole of the FTEA accessible electronically.
Kew will embark on producing a series of easy-to-use field guides for geographical areas, vegetation types or plant groups. This will be driven by local needs and involve collaborating with local scientists.
Several field trips in southern Africa will be organised with the objective to collect plant samples and capture insects (including pollinators) as part of the HOTSPOTS project. DNA barcoding approaches will be used for insect identification, and patterns of both pollinator and plant diversity will be examined to help explain hyper-diversity in the various hotspots.
Comparative Plant Biology (2006 onwards)
A number of high profile papers on the use of phylogenetic diversity indices for designing conservation strategies are expected to be submitted and published.
EU-funded HOTSPOTS (Large-Scale Syntheses team) and HOTMED projects will be implemented. Results of activities will continue to be published in journals with IF>2, especially with regard to using DNA barcoding and phylogenetic data in conservation planning.
Sustainable Utilisation of Plant Resources (2006 onwards)
The African focus of SEPASAL will continue to be developed by strengthening existing links with partner nodes and seeking opportunities to develop new partnerships. We aim to make available online comprehensive, fully referenced data sets for 600 Namibian species by end of 2006, and for 1,500 E African species by end of 2007. Major enhancements of SEPASAL Global Editing and web-querying interface to increase data capture and to enable easier access to data for users are expected.
Kew will continue hosting the UK Country Office of PROTA, providing ongoing input into PROTA’s databases and contributing to publications for the PROTA Handbook series, particularly Cereals and Pulses, Dyes and Tannins, Vegetable Oils, Medicinal Plants, and Timbers, and associated “Special Products” already in preparation. We also intend to continue to meet targets of 600 UK-collected bibliographic references per annum (funding dependent).
Database links between PROTA and SEPASAL will be developed in order to enable the enhanced data sets to be used as a guide for prioritising collecting targets.
As part of the African Wild Harvest project, Kew will: work with Kenyan partners and farmers' communities to produce a toolkit for the conservation of indigenous knowledge for sustainable use of traditional food plants; facilitate the communities in publication of their indigenous knowledge relating to traditional food plants; assist communities in developing their own seed resources (funding dependent). Working with Kenyan partners and farmers' communities, African Wild Harvest will be expanded to contribute to the recommendations of the COP VII/32 cross-cutting initiative on biodiversity for food and nutrition.
Kew will contribute to an African-led database on the anti-tuberculosis activity of plants.
The development of “health” gardens in Grahamstown, South Africa will be supported as part of the Darwin Initiative project to encourage the sustainable production of food and medicinal plants.
We will continue to work with collaborators in Nigeria, Ghana, Tunisia, Kenya on collating ethnobotanical information about the uses of plants, studying the diversity of plants used to treat different conditions and evaluating these traditional uses.
Kews Millenium Seed Bank Project (MSBP) will support plant conservation effort, plant propagation and (re) introduction/restoration programmes (use of collections) in partner countries and of collaborators in Drylands Africa.
Conservation and Environmental Monitoring (2006 onwards)
A series of conservation checklists for focus countries will be produced, concentrating on groups suggested by those countries, bringing taxonomy up to date and providing conservation assessments for all species; species with higher conservation ratings will be treated in more detail.
The manual DNA & Tissue Banking for Biodiversity and Conservation was jointly published by RBG Kew and IUCN in January 2006.
In general, an important part of the strategy is cross-departmental synergy, including multiple uses of datasets. The wide range of projects within Drylands Africa offers great scope for such synergy. An example of this is comparative biology, where there are strong links between work underway in the Jodrell and the Herbarium, with molecular work underpinning the taxonomy and evolutionary biology of larger and/or complicated genera such as Plectranthus. Again, RBG Kew is in a position to be able to carry out these long-term studies, unlike many other institutes where the horizon often has to be limited to shorter time scales. We also continue to link conservation planning with the phylogenetic data and provide baseline data for the development of future conservation actions within current partnerships, and to extend the use of DNA resources to DNA banking and barcoding for conservation. Another example of an integrated approach is the joint MSB/Sustainable Uses of Plants programme in Kenya and Namibia; this has already led to SEPASAL/PROTA species being ranked in terms of their usefulness to assist our partners in Kenya and Namibia with developing priorities for seed collecting. Other links include the input of both Herbarium and Jodrell staff in conservation and sustainable use reports. There are more opportunities to strengthen the links among the departments, especially through greater taxonomic input into the applied work at the Jodrell Laboratory, e.g. in assessments of sustainable use of useful indigenous food and crop plants as well as economic studies including medicinal plants