In the October 29, 2010 issue of Science magazine, a group of twenty-five tropical biologists published a brief letter to the editor about the recent occurrence of a general fruiting event in the rainforests on the island of Borneo. The letter states the importance of these events to the future of forest restoration efforts in Indonesia. The seeds of most tropical species cannot be stored and must germinate and survive as small seedlings. The fruiting events in Borneo are unpredictable and only occur infrequently which means that the availability of future seed crops is unknown. These seed crops will be a major source of biodiversity and genetic wealth, so international and national organisations should prepare infrastructure and expertise to take advantage of the next fruiting event, because the seeds are highly perishable. Two of the authors are faculty at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Yunnan, China.
The pdf copy of the letter is available here: Kettle et al science |
