Miracle or menace? : biotechnology and the third world / by Robert Walgate.

  • Walgate, Robert
Date:
[1990]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Miracle or menace? : biotechnology and the third world / by Robert Walgate. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Chapter 5: Three crops: cocoa, cassava and trees 63 resistant cassava clones it would be a tremendous benefit to African farmers. In Africa, cassava has the highest annual tonnage of all food crops (50 million tonnes) [3]. The world tonnage is 137 million, grown on 14 million hectares. A hardy tropical shrub with a tuberous root which stores much starch, cassava is a safety net crop for 300 million poor farmers — particularly in Africa, where it provides 40% of calories consumed, and to a lesser extent in Thailand, where it is a cash crop grown to make tapioca, and in Latin America. It has a nearly unmatched degree of drought tolerance, flexibility in planting dates, and yield [4]. But it has major drawbacks. It takes hours of women's labour to The roots of cassava - like this plant in Cape Verde - provide Africa with most of its calories. But the plant is susceptible to several pests. / Ron Giling/Panos Pictures
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