Plant Resources of Tropical Africa

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African soap berry

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Phyolacca dodecandra or the Africal soap berry belongs to the family Phytolaccaceae and is native to most of sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar. It has [ ... ]




Media Centre News State of the art PROTABASE
State of the art PROTABASE PDF Print

14/01/2009


... all Medicinals 1 and Timbers 1 available in Protabase ...


December 2008, 95 review articles on medicinal plants species and 88 review articles on timbers species were added to PROTAbase.

The database now contains 1169 records. Each review article covers 1 species. In some articles related species on which very little information is available are mentioned, bringing the total of treated species up to 2,040.

3,958 vernacular names in English, Swahili, French and Portugese may serve as an entry to the required species.

List of published species sorted by: scientific names or vernacular names.


The database contains the complete set of articles from 4 commodity groups, the first volume of articles on 2 commodity groups and sample reviews of the remaining 10 commodity groups:

Commodity group Articles Species
Cereals and pulses 71 80
Vegetables 271 355
Dyes and tannins 70 112
Ornamentals 2 2
Forages 2 2
Fruits 2 2
Timbers 280 511
Carbohydrates 2 2
Auxiliary plants 2 2
Fuel plants 1 1
Medicinal plants 411 899
Spices and condiments 2 2
Essential oils and exudates 2 2
Vegetable oils 47 64
Stimulants 2 2
Fibres 2 2

Apart from their primary use most species have secondary uses as well. Below are listed the numbers of review articles with a use in a particular commodity group:

Commodity group Articles
Cereals and pulses 99
Vegetables 424
Dyes and tannins 214
Ornamentals 311
Forages 385
Fruits 200
Timbers 470
Carbohydrates 139
Auxiliary plants 258
Fuel plants 306
Medicinal plants 972
Spices and condiments 125
Essential oils and exudates 121
Vegetable oils 124
Stimulants 58
Fibres 284

PROTABASE SEARCH SCREEN
On the top left corner of the PROTA Internet pages, you see the button ‘Search Protabase’ which leads to the search screen of PROTABASE.
An extra link to the search screen was added in the text on the PROTA home page.

‘Search Protabase’ provides 4 search options for specific fields: Scientific names, Vernacular Names, Uses, Geographic distribution, and an option to search through all fields: Free text search.

 

News

The 2011 facts on PROTA

Since 2010, much effort was spent on promoting PROTA (Communications & Outreach) and measuring PROTA's impact (Monitoring & Evaluation).
A new [ ... ]


'PROTA 16: Fibres' Published!

Since prehistoric times plant fibres have been used for many purposes, including clothing, cordage, thatching, basketry and paper. More recent uses in [ ... ]




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