The BACIS Archives

[ POM - 98101 ]

• PROSEA - Plant Resources of South-East Asia

The PROSEA Programme

Prosea is an international programme focused on plant resources of South-East Asia. Its objectives are to collect, evaluate and summarise existing knowledge on about 5000 useful plants of the region, to publish this information in a multivolume handbook, and set up a plant databank. It is an interdisciplinary project covering the fields of agriculture, horticulture, forestry and botany. A network of offices in six South-East Asian countries has been established, information is gathered, and published in a Handbook. At the same time extension material for education, industry and research is being developed. The project is committed to conservation of biodiversity and to rural development through ecologically balanced land-use systems.

The Handbook

One of the main objectives of the project is to publish an illustrated multivolume handbook. The responsibility for preparing this handbook lies with the Publication Office at Wageningen Agricutural University, The Netherlands. A large international team of experts is invited to prepare the texts on particular species or genera, which are being published in commodity groups. This classification has the advantage of being convenient to users with specific interests, while general aspects can be dealt with in an introductory chapter for the group as a whole. All taxa are treated in a similar manner with details on uses, distribution, botany, ecology, agronomy or silviculture, diseases and pests, harvesting, genetic resources, breeding, prospects and literature. The more important or potentially important plant species are given a full format textual description; the remainder are dealt with in a brief form.

A hardbound edition of the Handbook as well as a paperback edition (two years after publication of the hardbound edition) are available through Backhuys Publishers, Leiden, The Netherlands. A paperback low price edition is for sale in South-East Asia and the ACP (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) group of developing countries through the Network Office (Bogor, Indonesia) and the various Country Offices.