N W SIMMONDS
I know that the title and the contents of this meeting
are somewhat narrower than those I have adopted. But I have the Chairman's
permission to go a little wider and indulge some of my diverse whims and
fancies. So I include perennials at large (and sometimes not all that long-lived),
refer to more of the tropics than Africa and am prepared to regard cash
as being as good as food any day.
I start with the most conspicuous gaps in research
and understanding, the palms. Few people even know the peach palm by sight:
pupunha, pechibaye, peach palm, Bactris (Guihielma) gasipaes. This is a
staple oily- starchy food for thousands (?millions) of people in moist
northern South America. It is small, fast, spiny, clonable, yields a leafy
and saleable vegetable if required to do so and is almost wholly neglected
by science. A wonderful plant that cries out for decent breeding (non-spiny
mutants are known, for example, though one fears that they might invite
monkeys). The coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) has a multitude of uses, spreads
throughout the tropics at lowish altitudes, mostly near the sea and has
superb breeding potential, especially using short x tall hybrids which
give outstanding yields of smallish fruit. It grows easily and combines
well with diverse plants on the ground as a light shade, for example cocoa
and fodder grasses. Yet it has been but little touched by serious research.
In South America, there are diverse oil palms, worthy complements to Elaeis
guineensis, for example the babassu (Orbygnia speciosa) which inhabits
large tracts of Brasil, withstands wet feet and has excellent quality edible
oil. The date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, is almost the opposite, growing
on low-class dust so long as there is a reachable water table below. For
very many people Phoenix 18 food -- they have almost nothing else. It is
also clonable, though not easily.
Turning to other perennials, there is a multitude of attractive fruits and nuts, running to hundred of names, virtually all untouched. I shall certainly not try to list them but there must surely be serious economic candidates in their number. i especially like the mango (Mangifera indica) because it is nearly unkillable (though sometime inedible), the cashew (Anacardium occidentale), because it stands drought, has a superb quality nut and a fermentable 'apple' -- the latter product used to be sold in Trinidad mm shops as Anacardia Port, quite useful in cooking, but not to be rashly drunk. Another excellent but neglected tree is the avocado (Persea gratissima), a native of Mexico, variable and eminently breedable as clones. It is known locally as 'the butter of the poor because of the delicious oily-seeming flesh, but one can travel great distances in SE Asia and Africa and never see a tree. The breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis, is a near staple crop for many Pacific peoples but by no means widely spread outside Asia and parts of the Americas. In Africa it seems to be replaced by the local analogue, Treculia africana. Artocarpus is one of the most famous plant introductions in history but it never quite achieved the promise expected of it in the West Indies -- but it is widespread, much used and its relatives the breadnut, champedak and jackfruit are all also attractive and favoured locally. These are important starchy crops and almost wholly neglected. Even the exact status of parthenocarpy in the breadfruit seems to be unknown. Another important starch locally derives from the pseudostems of the banana relative, Ensete ventficosum. Locally, in Ethiopia, where the crop was invented, called inset the aerial stems are chopped down before flowering and starch is stripped out of the sheaths, in a manner reminiscent of the utilization of the sago palms. The plant is unbranched so can not normally be cloned but the Ethiopians have a trick or two to cope with that little problem. The bananas themselves, of course, including the plantains (Musa), are of immense importance in tropical agriculture; they have been rather well studied but utilization lags and breeding for local food supplies is in a sorry state, even though the essential cytogenetic tricks are known. There are at least two cash-generating perennials worth mention. Rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), once established, has its social problems but provides steady work and income and markets which know what they want. It is pretty well researched but not so well as my other choice, sugarcane (Saccharum spp). This is more seasonal but ideally well adapted to the concept of the 'nuclear estate'; no crop has been better bred and it is virtually certain that well adapted cultivars could be pulled out very quickly for any specific place. Both these crops demand orderly production and marketing systems but both provide cash flows. Cocoa (Theobroma cacao) might also be included here as a small tree that does well for small farmers. The list of near-perennials, plants which hang on in more or less shrubby form or as dried out bits is long. Very incompletely, I mention as locally valued crops now nearly wholly neglected, the following: the very various Cucurbitaceae (including the extraordinary buffalo gourd, Cucurbita -foetidissima); the onions and relatives (Allium spp), which are part-staple in Egypt for example; and the peppers (Capsicum spp) which are hardy Finally, one of the most neglected sectors of all: timber trees. There must be hundreds, more probably thousands, of timbers that grow well and quickly, can be bred and could be marketed. Indeed, a few such as Eucalyptus, Gmelina and teak have been. Naturally, one thinks first of teak which is indeed an excellent subject first explored in India over 100 years ago. But there are scores more and I had intended to display a small sample of about ten Trinidad woods that grew, worked and finished well. And Trinidad is but one small island! There is no point in listing them; the main point surely would be to look at lots of species and choose carefully before committing resources to a choice which might a have fatal defect (such as propagability). I suspect this is the sort of position that agroforestry is now approaching. Growing wood in a world increasingly deficient in timber makes much sense but growing carefully designed mixtures of annuals and perennials is a different bird. True, the idea of the living fence-post is excellent (we used them in Trinidad 50 years ago) but otherwise the annuals too often seem to suffer from lack of space, lack of nutrients,, neglect and overshading. If this is right, agroforestry will have done us the service of returning our attention to the merits of rotation with woody plants rather than competition. Agriculture and forestry are complementary land uses. shrubs and a visit to a Mexican market ought to be enough to convince anyone of their economic importance as well as of the hardihood of Mexican digestions. One could go on and on; the point is not so much to pick crops for research as to recognise how little we have done on the plants that people really grow and eat or sell.