Ethnobotany in Fiji
Updated: Jun 16, 2020
As a Genebank Impacts Fellow for the Global Crop Diversity Trust, I will be traveling to Fiji on an ethnobotanical expedition to understand how the "prestige" crop taro (Colocasia esculenta) is used in modern and traditional cultivation practices, culinary preparations, ceremony and medicine making as well as in the folkloric oral history. I will be on assignment at the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees (CePaCT), traveling in-field to gather stories to be shared highlighting the vital role the seed bank plays in breeding Taro Leaf Blight (Phytophthora colocasia ) resistant cultivars, maintaining the lines, conducting virus indexing and redistributing plantlets to the island nations- protecting a vital staple food crop, and cultural totem.
