Papua New Guinea

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Overview

Country Papua New Guinea Capital : Port Moresby

Papua New Guinea encompasses half of the world’s second largest island, New Guinea and has a population of over 7.86 million.

Papua New Guinea’s varied scenery reflects a generally recent geologic history in which movements of the Earth’s crust resulted in the collision of the northward-moving Australian Plate with the westward-moving Pacific Plate. In fact, New Guinea was part of Australia some 8,000 years ago and was separated by the shallow flooding of the Torres Strait.

Agricultural production, mainly subsistence farming, accounts for about one-third of the country’s gross domestic product. In the archipelagoes of the north and northeast, yams, taro, and bananas are grown as staple foods.

76-100% of the food energy consumed in Papua New Guinea comes from crops that are not native to the region. Most of these plants’ diversity is found elsewhere on the planet.

The Crop Trust has supported 5 projects in Papua New Guinea

  1. Aroids: The Crop Trust supported the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in regenerating and characterizing 484 taro accessions with the objective of rescuing threatened diversity and enhancing use of the crops.
  2. Banana: The National Agricultural Research Institute received support from the Crop Trust to regenerate and characterize 217 accessions of banana with the objective of rescuing threatened diversity and enhancing use of the crop.
  3. Sweet Potato: The Crop Trust supported the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) to test sweet potato accessions both in the field and in the laboratory for resistance to leaf scab and tolerance to cold with the aim of identifying potential sources of genes and making them available to the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) for multiplication and distribution to breeders and other researchers in the Pacific and South East Asian countries.
  4. Sweet Potato: The Crop Trust supported the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) to regenerate and characterize 440 sweet potato accessions with the objective of rescuing threatened diversity and enhancing use of the crops.
  5. Yam: The Crop Trust supported the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) to regenerate and characterize 165 yam accessions with the objective of rescuing threatened diversity and enhancing use of the crops. 32 accessions are safety duplicated in the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC).