Plant Resources of Tropical Africa

The webdatabase is PROTABASE. It is freely accessible on-line. PROTABASE can be searched by:

* Scientific name
* Vernacular name
* Commodity Group
* Geographical distribution
* Free text (searching for any word or combination of words in the review article)

PROTABASE contains the review articles. The species treated in extended format have a botanical drawing, a distribution map and colour photographs to illustrate the species and its uses. The information presented to the user is drawn from different linked databases:

* AUTHORS containing the names and addresses of editors and authors contributing to PROTA
* REFERENCES containing all checked literature references used to write and edit the review articles including references to the sources used for the linedrawing
* PHOTFILE containing the botanical drawings, colour photographs and distribution maps with corresponding captions; these are collected during the editing process by the Photo Editor.

Book

A book regroups all review articles of a certain Commodity Group. It contains a botanical drawing and a distribution map for species treated in extended format. Colour photographs do not appear in the book. The book has the following sections:

* Contributors; names and addresses of authors and editors
* Introduction; general aspects of that Commodity Group and of the choice of species
* Review articles
* Species with other primary use; listing of species which are treated in other Commodity Groups, but which are being used as the Commodity Group being published
* Literature
* Indexes of scientific and vernacular names

Books are published in English with an orange cover and in French with a green cover.

CD-ROM

This is the off-line version of the webdatabase with similar functionality, covering exactly the same species as the book, but the species are also illustrated with photographs. The CD-ROM is bilingual.
The CD-ROM’s are not marketed separately but only in combination with the book.