Listing of Useful Plants of the World

Information on the background to this Listing is available below. Hard copies of the Listing (553 pages; over 4200 species listed) are available from the publisher, Dr Rob Fletcher; see Advice on Publications Available. The collaboration of colleagues in establishing the current and potential weed status of many of these species is gratefully acknowledged; if any species with a significant weed risk is not identified as such, please contact Dr Fletcher. Many countries have strict controls on entry of plant species and it is essential that the official quarantine organisation or other relevant authorities be contacted to determine the regulations and requirements before importation of any plant material.

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[A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I] [J] [K] [L] [M]

[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]

The aim of growing a new crop is to make money. Unfortunately, successful commercialisation of new crops is a high risk adventure. This Listing is intended as an aid for those new crop entrepreneurs choosing new crops for research and development in Australia. The Listing includes over 4200 plant species amongst which there may may be potential new crops. In most cases, these species are not currently commercial anywhere in Australia. Each species included has been associated somewhere in the world at some time in history with at least one useful product.

One use for this Listing may be to identify those species which have recently attracted the attention of the world's research community. The number of publications worldwide mentioning each of the species can indicate the extent of the knowledge base currently available. The trends in numbers of papers over the past twenty-eight years can indicate whether a species is attracting interest or whether interest is waning.

Before proceeding with any new crop development, it would be wise to view the original papers. A mention in a paper does not infer the mention is positive.

Several of the species in the Listing have been identified as posing significant problems as weeds at least somewhere in Australia. These species can be identified with the tag: [Weed]. For more information, please visit:

http://www.weeds.org.au/ Weeds Australia: National Weeds Strategy
http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/progserv/plants/weeds/Weedsci.htm Permitted/Exclusion List: Western Australia
www.aqis.gov.au Australian Quarantine Inspection Service

If there are any other species requiring this identification for Australia, please inform Dr Rob Fletcher at r.fletcher@mailbox.uq.edu.au.

There are many potential problems with importing and subsequently growing plants from this list without the appropriate prior checks. For example, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) bans the importation of new plant species that are not on a permitted list irrespective of the weed status or otherwise of this plant in other countries. Any new plant species has to be formally assessed and added to the permitted (or non-permitted list) before entry. This requires the provision of information about the species which is used in a formal risk analysis process. The potential for new species to bring in pests and diseases is also assessed.

Importation of seed or plants of species that are already established in Australia is also subject to AQIS control and may need a permit and be subject to specific conditions as to cultivar, source, purity and/or treatments required before import.

Many other countries have controls on the entry of plant species and the issue of invasive species is getting much more international attention with the developments under the Convention on Biodiversity. Parties to this Convention (well over 100) have a legal obligation to prevent the spread of invasive species.

As indicated above, many countries have strict controls on entry of plant species and we need to check with the official quarantine organisation or other relevant authorities to determine the regulations and requirements before importation

Another use for this Listing would be to identify those species about which little is known.

It is hoped that this volume will be of some assistance in the first steps towards choosing new crop species for research and development, with a view to successful commercialization.

The First Edition of this Listing was released in December 1993 and was intended to demonstrate the large number of new crops which may have had some potential for commercial development. The present Listing is a reprinting of that Listing, with some additional information. The categories presented include:

The commonnamesincluded are not in any way exhaustive but have also been cross-indexed to help in finding the new crops, listed by botanical name.

As in the first edition of the Listing, crop uses have been included for each species. The classifications used are not mutually exclusive; for example, the starch crops have been defined as those providing starch from above ground parts and root crops have been classified separately. The numbers of each crop use are as follows (including all multiple classifications):

The sources referred to are as follows:

Brucker: Brucher, H. (1989) Useful plants of neotropical origin : and their wild relatives. (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, New York) 296pp.

Cribb: Cribb, A. B. and Cribb, J.W. (1981) Useful wild plants in Australia. (Collins, Sydney, London) 269 pp.

Douglas: Douglas, J.S. (1978) Alternative foods: a world guide to lesser-known edible plants. (Pelham, London). 177pp.

Grieve: Grieve, M. (Leyel, C.F., Ed.) A modern herbal : the medicinal, culinary, cosmetic, and economic properties, cultivation, and folklore of herbs, grasses, fungi, shrubs, and trees with all their modern scientific uses (Hafner Press, New York) 916 pp.

Kochhar: Kochhar, S.L. (1986) Tropical crops: a textbook of economic botany. (Macmillan, London). 467pp.

Rehm: Rehm, S. and Espig, G. ( 1991) The cultivated plants of the tropics and subtropics : cultivation, economic value, utilization (Joseph Margraf, Weikersheim, Germany) 552 pp.

Sturtevant: Hedrick, U.P. (Ed.) Sturtevant's edible plants of the world. (Dover Publications, New York) 686pp.

This figure refers to the numbers of publications worldwide which have made mention of the botanical name listed, for the period 1970-1996. These numbers have been derived from searches of the Agricola Database available on Silver Platter CD-ROM.

The Agricola database has been compiled by the United States National Agricultural Library and comprises over 3,393,000 citations to journal articles, monographs, theses, patents, software, audiovisual materials and technical reports relating to all aspects of agriculture, for the period from 1970 to the present.

The abbreviation 'syn' between two botanical names indicates both names have been used for the same species. In such cases, both names have been searched for and the results for each are included. The abbreviation 'see' between two botanical names indicates that the second name should probably have preference: again, both have been searched and included.

The trends in these numbers on a yearly basis over the twenty seven years (1970-1996) since the Agricola database began have also been included.

A typical graph appears as follows:

Actual numbers of publications have been plotted as vertical bars for each year, with the left hand scale ranging from 0 to 100 papers per year. The proportional index, represented by the continuous line = [the actual numbers of publications found/the total number of publications indexed for that year] x 10,000, with the right hand scale ranging from 0 to 1 (with 1 representing 0.01% of all citations for that year). All graphs have the same scales throughout the Listing.

It is more valid to examine the proportional index to determine the trend, since the total number of publications indexed per annum has varied over time, peaking in 1983 as shown below. Care should be exercised in interpreting those cases where the results are off the standard scale used.

Technical Note: Searching was carried out using the WINSpirs software and over 850,000 searches were completed of the entire Agricola database. Searching was facilitated using the Automate Professional Macro Writing Software. Crop names were read from a Word file and substituted into a WINSpirs History file which enabled all Agricola CD-Roms to be searched simultaneously for combinations of the crop name and the year of publication. Each set of results was downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet for compilation of the graphs. Most of the difficulties with this method, and there were some, arose from the Servers accessing the CD-Roms. Grateful acknowledgement is made of assistance rendered by Mr Gerry Kregor and Mr Greg Ferguson with this searching.

Contact: Dr Rob Fletcher, School of Agriculture and Horticulture, The University of Queensland Gatton, 4343; Telephone: 07 5460 1311 or 07 5460 1301; Facsimile: 07 5460 1112; International facsimile: 61 7 5460 1112; Email: r.fletcher@mailbox.uq.edu.au

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Latest update 1 January 2000 by: RF