1000 Economic Plants

The world is fed mainly by a dozen plant species, and most agricultural countries have specialists for their country’s major crops. The world also has thousands of minor economic species, which potentially are as important ecologically and economically as the big dozen, but there are not enough specialists to study them. There is an overwhelming number of climatological, pedological, anthropological, latitudinal, and biological variables associated with these minor species.

In the 1970s, Dr. James Duke worked at The Economic Botany Laboratory (EBL) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is trying to gather data on these potentially economically useful species, though the project was ultimately abandoned for lack of funding. Dr. Duke's full paper describing that important work is available for download.