Lesser-known plants of potential use in agriculture and forestry.

To help feed, clothe, and house an increasing population, to make marginal lands more productive, to meet challenging resource needs, and to reforest the devastated tropics, we need a revitalized worldwide investigation of little-known plant species. Such an effort would expand our agricultural resource base and ease our dangerous dependence on a relative handful of crops. It would build a more stable food supply for drought-stricken Africa and other parts of the Third World, and it would reclothe many of the barren lands where erosion now threatens disaster. Some plants that are now virtually unknown are likely to become mainstays of international agriculture and industry.