Experts say brown streak disease could reduce cassava production in Africa by 50 percent. As many as 300 million Africans could be affected.
“You would have explosion of the disease, and, and maybe we would need a decade before we could respond and offer farmers, and to millions of farmers, to offer solutions, so, the magnitude of the problem would be gigantic.
Claude Fauquet says if even one farmer shares infected stem cuttings, the disease will continue to spread.
The Most Important Plant You May Never Have Heard Of…
A listener in Nigeria, Gaddafi Adamu, has asked us to talk about the moringa oleifera plant. This kind of shrub or tree is grown for food and other uses. We spoke with Gerry Moore, a plant expert at the Natural Resources Conservation Service, part of the United States Department of Agriculture. He told us the plant is high in protein and rich in vitamins and minerals.
“It’s sometimes viewed as one of the most nutritious plants in the world. It has a lot of nutritional values, and much of the plant can be used for food. So it’s not just the fruit that can be taken, but it is an unusual plant in that the leaves, the fruits, the roots and the seeds are all used in one way or another for food.”
The moringa plant is sometimes used as a nutritional supplement
The plant is known by different names around the world. Moringa oleifera is native to the foothills of the Himalayas, from Pakistan to eastern India. Because it is native to that area, much of the research on the plant has been done by scientists in Pakistan and India.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25