Arid, at first

By Mahmoud Bakr
Global food security depends on a handful of crops: nowhere is this harsh reality more in evidence than in countries where famine is a very real threat. While the agricultural situation today seems to bear little relation to what it was less than a century ago, humanity remains overwhelmingly dependent on maize, wheat and rice.
Of course, political considerations may play more of a role than they used to, affecting supply even in times of abundance, since the world's major agricultural producers can control the market by stockpiling or dumping certain commodities. Still, whether individuals, corporations or factors beyond the control of either (like climate change or natural disasters, which, by causing crop failure, can tip entire regions over the brink into an emergency situation) determine what goods reach our tables and when, there is a virtual consensus that research has urgent tasks before it. It must now focus on the development of new strains, and the conservation of plant specimens that may have untapped nutritional value and potential for medicinal use.
The Desert Research Station in Al-Arish is doing its bit in this respect, most recently by hosting a workshop sponsored by the International Institute for Plant Genetic Resources (IIPGR) in collaboration with the Desert Research Centre, from 11 to 15 January. The workshop's general goal was to enhance the contribution of endangered or under-exploited species to food security; participants also discussed the ways in which marketing could be improved to generate additional sources of income for disadvantaged groups. The workshop brought together specialists on plant life and food crop cultivation from Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, Italy and Spain, yet it was not purely speculative; by including sedentarised or semi-settled nomads with a stake in the cultivation of desert crops, the organisers ensured that practitioners with first-hand experience of the problems inherent in arid-area agriculture could interact with specialists better acquainted with the laboratory.
Abdel-Moneim Hegazi, director of the Desert Research Centre, explained that the workshop was devoted to the discussion of little known medicinal plants and crops that can grow in Egyptian deserts. He said that information networks would be established to ensure the optimum dissemination of selected crops and to establish links between producers and economic development projects. By improving marketing capabilities, Hegazi said, cultivators could enhance demand for specific crops. He also noted that certain varieties of desert plants were disappearing, others were yet to be discovered, while the exploitation of new specimens could be improved to generate income more efficiently. The Desert Research Centre, Hegazi added, had already conducted a survey of medicinal and aromatic plants cultivated in the arid areas in Egypt.
This recent meeting is one in a series aimed at the implementation of a global project, conceived as covering three major areas: North Africa (Egypt, Turkey and Yemen), Asia (India and Nepal) and Latin America (Peru and Ecuador). Extensive research is underway to optimise the application of biotechnology to medicinal and aromatic plants in various regions. Efforts are aimed at improving income for cultivators and ensuring food security for consumers. The Al-Arish conference thus brought together a wide spectrum of stakeholders including leaders of Bedouin communities, NGO representatives and researchers from various state-sponsored centres, among others.
Project organisers have taken regional specificities into account. In the Sinai Peninsula, for instance, medicinal and aromatic plants were singled out for special attention.
George Ayyad, regional director of the IIPGR, said that medicinal and aromatic plants not only help protect the health of the rural population, but provide a much needed source of income to cultivators in areas distant from established centres of agricultural activity. Ayyad noted the urgent need to upgrade information systems and to create an effective database that could be of use to producers and researchers alike. He admitted, however, that it is often difficult to collect data about plants that must be studied in very diverse, and therefore very distant, natural habitats -- hence the virtual impossibility of dealing with a wide variety of specimens within the context of a single project.
Kamal El-Batanouni, professor at Cairo University's Faculty of Science, described the medicinal and aromatic plants grown in Egypt as a "national treasure." Over 50 different types of medicinal plants may be obtained from druggists, whose role is often underestimated. Many Egyptians prefer the 'attar or traditional apothecary to Western-trained doctors, whom they may find unaffordable or intimidating. In this context, El-Batanouni called for the preservation of knowledge related to the use of plants in Bedouin medicine, and emphasised the importance of obtaining intellectual property rights for such traditional knowledge. The Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), the Desert Research Institute, and various other scientific institutions are currently conducting a project for the collection and documentation of traditional knowledge on medicinal plants, and lobbying for the enactment of legislation to protect intellectual property rights related thereto.
Ismail Abdel-Gelil, director of the Desert Research Station in Al-Arish, alerted participants to the remarkable resiliency of many specimens: "Plants growing under harsh environmental conditions have developed resistance to disease, aridity and pests," he explained. At a time when the excessive use of pesticides has been discovered to create a host of new problems -- disrupting the ecosystem, polluting water resources and harming other links in the food chain -- such information is heartening, and should point producers in new directions.
A number of corporations specialised in biotechnology or pharmaceuticals are already researching plants used in "traditional" medicine. An unbalanced equation has thus emerged: such plants are usually found in economically underprivileged regions, but multinational firms, which have the technology to generalise the production and distribution of these resources, are often reluctant to share knowledge or profits with the owners of the primary product.
Abdel-Gelil thus underlined the need to initiate a global dialogue. Technologically sophisticated corporations or nations can only obtain the resources they are so well placed to exploit on a fair and equitable basis, he insisted.
Ahmed Mansour, known as the "doctor of St Catherine," is one of the few individuals with detailed knowledge of the 80-odd varieties of medicinal plants in Sinai and their various benefits. The plants, he said, are used either as components in other medicines or, used in doses determined by the patient's condition, as remedies in their own right. Prescriptions are drawn up to traditional knowledge. The patient, Mansour asserted, "must know the precise nature of his disease so that we can make our diagnosis and prescribe a therapy that would heal rather than aggravate the condition." The best solution, however, he cautioned, "is for the patient to go to see the doctor first, for diagnosis, and then to come to us to obtain the herbs or plants for his treatment."
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