Presentation by Bruce French
UTAS Tas Institute Ag. Research Building Room 349
Friday, 5th June 2009 Commencing 3..30pm until
About the Speaker
Bruce French is a graduate in agriculture from the Uni of Tas and has spent most of his professional career working in or involved with food plants and food production in Papua New Guinea. He has done field work in village settings and lectured at Vudal University. He has done a range of consultancies with FAO, CSIRO, World Bank, IBPGR, CARE (Aust), New Zealand AID and other organisations. He has published a reference set for Papua New Guinea covering Edible Plants, Insect Pests, Diseases, Crop Production, Food Composition, and also some regional studies. He is currently doing a similar series for the Solomon Islands. Currently, this work has grown into compiling a compendium as a database of edible plants of the tropical world (18,500 species), attempting to convey information in a plain English format accessible to indigenous workers. Towards this he has travelled to several Pacific, Asioan and African countries, as well as photgraphing plants in herbarium and Botanical gardens in Australia, New Zealand, and USA. In the past, some of this information has been put on FAO and Ecoport websites and some of it is available on the www.foodplantsinternational.com website. Rotary International are becoming supportive to enable the information to be delivered to schools and other groups in developing countries.
Brief Abstract of the Talk
This Lecture will highlight and illustrate significant features of less familiar tropical food plants, and focus on their relevance for feeding a hungry world.
