News

June 2008, 63 review articles on medicinal plants species and 51 review articles on timbers species were added to PROTAbase.

The database now contains 989 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 1,589.

Over 3,000 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, parts of the 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	3	3
Forages	2	2
Fruits	2	2
Timbers	192	342
Carbohydrates	2	2
Auxiliary plants	2	2
Fuel plants	2	2
Medicinal plants	316	614
Spices and condiments	2	2
Essential oils and exudates	2	2
Vegetable oils	48	65
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		405
Dyes and tannins		187
Ornamentals		262
Forages		354
Fruits		166
Timbers		372
Carbohydrates		112
Auxiliary plants		218
Fuel plants		238
Medicinal plants		813
Spices and condiments		110
Essential oils and exudates		99
Vegetable oils		114
Stimulants		55
Fibres		229

 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.

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