The tropics are the source of many of our familiar fruits,
vegetables, oils, and spice, as well as such commodities as rubber
and wood. Moreover, other tropical fruits and vegetables are being
introduced into our markets to offer variety to our diet. Now, as
tropical forests are increasingly threatened, we face a double-fold
crisis: not only the loss of the plants but also rich pools of
potentially useful genes. Wild populations of crop plants harbor
genes that can improve the productivity and disease resistance of
cultivated crops, many of which are vital to developing economies
and to global commerce. Eight chapters of this book are devoted to
a variety of tropical crops-beverages, fruit, starch, oil, resins,
fuelwood, fodder, spices, timber, and nuts-the history of their
domestication, their uses today, and the known extent of their gene
pools, both domesticated and wild. Drawing on broad research, the
authors also consider conservation strategies such as parks and
reserves, corporate holdings, gene banks and tissue culture
collections, and debt-for-nature swaps. They stress the need for a
sensitive balance between conservation and the economic well-being
of local populations. If economic growth is part of the
conservation effort, local populations and governments will be more
strongly motivated to save their natural resources. Distinctly
practical and soundly informative, this book provides insight into
the overwhelming abundance of tropical forests, an unsettling sense
of what we may lose if they are destroyed, and a deep appreciation
for the delicate relationships between tropical forest plants and
people around the world.
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