Cassava - flora & fauna

This project is designed to keep track of all life - fungi, plant, and animal - living in, on, or around cassava fields or plants.

Cassava is currently (2018) grown on over 25 million hectares across the global tropics, in diverse production landscapes in parts of Africa, Asia, the Americas & Carribean, and the Pacific Islands. Lots of research has focused on particular pests & diseases in cassava which cause significant economic damages. However, relatively little attention has been focused on documenting the larger spectrum of organisms coexisting with cassava plants.

Building a collection of recorded observations is the first step in understanding these systems. This may lead to eventually modifying cassava systems to be more hospitable to the other inhabitants of the environment, or to designing systems with more beneficial or less pest species. less ↑