Issue No 8, July 1997.

NOTICE: Hard copies of the Australian New Crops Newsletter are available from the publisher, Dr Rob Fletcher. Details of availability are included in the Advice on Publications Available.

10. Monitoring research activity in specific new crops

Rob Fletcher and Greg Ferguson
The University of Queensland Gatton College
Queensland 4345

A technique has been developed to monitor those new crops which have been attracting the attention of the world's research community.

Such a scheme may draw attention to crops which for some reason have become interesting somewhere in the world and may warrant attention in Australia.

This has been done by automating the WINSpirs software which searches abstracts of scientific papers on CD-ROMs. Abstracts (or summaries) of each article published in the world literature, commencing in 1960, are available on CD-ROM. The CD-ROMs cover discipline areas of relevance to new crops development are shown in the table.

Using the AUTOMATE Professional Macro-Writing Software, WINSPIRS searches have been automated to record how many abstracts included mention of each new crop, in each year of publication, from 1960 to 1996 and the results delivered to an EXCEL database and graphed. A relative index for numbers of publications was also calculated and plotted to correct the numbers of publications against the varying total annual numbers of publications.

The initial group of crops searched to test the procedure was a group of forty one potential new crops identified as interesting by the organisers of a Tropical Fruit and Nut Planning Workshop to be held in Cairns in July 1997.

All forty four available CD-ROMs were searched simultaneously and the numbers of abstracts which were found, ranged from two abstracts to over ten thousand, as shown in the table on page 13.

In terms of the trends observed over the 37 years from 1960 to 1996:

ten crops had received very little attention,
five had received some attention but no trend was evident,
three had received some attention with a slow increase in research reporting activity,
five had received some increasing attention,
seven had received increasing attention,
one had attracted considerable attention which had been stable over the period,
five had peaked in the amount of attention attracted and
four appeared to have attracted most of their attention over the last fifteen years, only.

CD-ROMs available (May 1997)	Numbers of CD-ROMs	Numbers of Abstracts
Biological Abstracts	19	3,484,767
Medline Express	4	8,445,646
Agricola	4	3,393,686
Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau Abstracts	7	1,841,214
Food Science and Technology Abstracts	2	482,101
Current Contents	8	1,667,236
TOTAL	44	19,314,650

Crop No.	Potential New Crop	Number of abstracts 1960-1996	Number per year	Trend
1	Pouteria caimito or abiu	19	0.50	0.03
2	Annona cherimola x Annona squamosa or atemoya	116	3.05	0.84
3	Diospyros digyna or black sapote	8	0.21	0.02
4	Artocarpus altilis or breadfruit	357	9.39	0.73
5	Chrysophyllum cainito or caimito	37	0.97	0.04
6	Pouteria campechiana or canistel	27	0.71	0.05
7	Averrhoa carambola or carambola	400	10.53	0.91
8	Artocarpus polyphema or champedak	8	0.21	0.03
9	Lansium domesticum or duku or langsat	73	1.92	0.15
10	Durio zibethinus or durian	221	5.82	0.45
11	Passiflora quadrangularis or granadilla	163	4.29	0.02
12	Eugenia brasiliensis or grumichama	7	0.18	0.00
13	Psidium guajava or guava	2476	65.16	1.61
14	Myrciaria cauliflora or jaboticaba	38	1.00	0.06
15	Artocarpus heterophyllus or jackfruit or jakfruit	487	12.82	1.07
16	Ziziphus spp. or jujube	455	11.97	0.70
17	Syzygium malaccense or malay apple	9	0.24	0.00
18	Ponkan or mamey sapote	2951	77.66	7.90
19	Garcinia mangostana or purple mangosteen	164	4.32	0.38
20	Hylocereus guatemalensis or pitaya	23	0.61	0.07
21	Citrus maxima or pummelo	526	13.84	1.35
22	Nephelium lappaceum or rambutan	223	5.87	0.50
23	Rollinia deliciosa	273	7.18	0.69
24	Zalacca edulis or salak	99	2.61	0.05
25	Salty plum	2	0.05	0.00
26	Manilkara sapotilla or sapodilla	171	4.50	0.23
27	Annona muricata or soursop	296	7.79	0.56
28	Annona squamosa or sugar apple	452	11.89	1.02
29	Syzgium samarangenese or wax jambu	3	0.08	0.00
30	Areca catechu or betal nut	481	12.66	0.91
31	Cocoa nucifera or green coconut	17	0.45	0.03
32	Canarium mehenbethene or galap	9	0.24	0.02
33	Canarium ovatum or pili nut	20	0.53	0.04
34	Manihot esculenta or cassava	10314	271.42	17.91
35	Basella alba or ceylon spinach	75	1.97	0.13
36	Piper betle	491	12.92	0.91
37	Musa acuminata or plantain	1879	49.45	0.40
39	Xanthosoma spp. or tannia or Fijian taro	47	1.24	0.06
40	Colocasia esculenta or Samoan taro	1263	33.24	2.80
41	Psophocarpus tetragonolobus or winged bean	1804	47.47	3.65

Limitations of this approach to monitoring research activity

There are many problems with using this approach.

For example, the assumption has been made that publication of the results of research activity has occurred in the first place and that the method of publication has come within the range of journals surveyed by the producers of the CD-ROMs.

Secondly, the mention of a crop in an abstract does not indicate that the crop has produced positive results in the search for more productive crops. The mention may only be a reference to a weed or an observation of a plant occurring in a region.

Thirdly, major influences on the trends can be exerted by a change in name for the plant species. As well, con- fusion about the name of a species, for example the botanical name of pitaya, can produce unusual results.

Conclusions

Potential new crops attracting little attention in the published literature will be more difficult to research and to develop commercially, since little previous information of any kind will be available.

Potential new crops which have attracted increasing attention in the literature must have some aspect warranting this attention and this aspect should be identified.

Potential new crops which have attracted recent attention should be of the most interest, unless they have simply undergone a name change.

A Second Edition of The Listing of Potential New Crops for Australia, which was first released in December 1993 has been released. Searches of the type mentioned here from the Agricola Database for the period 1970 to 1996 have been conducted. These results have been charted and graphs of the type shown above for each of the 4591 potential new crops have been included in the Second Edition of the Listing.

Any claims made by authors in the Australian New Crops Newsletter are presented by the Editors in good faith. Readers would be wise to critically examine the circumstances associated with any claims to determine the applicability of such claims to their specific set of circumstances. This material can be reproduced, with the provision that the source and the author (or editors, if applicable) are acknowledged and the use is for information or educational purposes. Contact with the original author is probably wise since the material may require updating or amendment if used in other publications. Material sourced from the Australian New Crops Newsletter cannot be used out of context or for commercial purposes not related to its original purpose in the newsletter

Contact: Dr Rob Fletcher, School of Land and Food, The University of Queensland Gatton College, 4345; 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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originally created by: GK; latest update 6 June 1999 by: RF