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In the Ecuadorian Amazon region, there are various types of edible fruits that have distinct qualities and benefits. Understanding the uses, properties, and functions of these fruits is important for researching products that are only available in local markets. This review aims to gather and summarize the existing scientific literature on the ethnobotany, physicochemical composition, and bioactive compounds of these native fruits to highlight the potential of the region’s underutilized biodiversity. A systematic review was carried out following the PRISMA methodology, utilizing databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, Pubmed, Redalyc, and SciELO up to August 2023. The research identified 55 edible fruits from the Ecuadorian Amazon and reported their ethnobotanical information. The most common uses were fresh fruit consumption, preparation of typical food, and medicine. Additionally, nine native edible fruits were described for their physicochemical characteristics and bioactive components: Aphandra natalia (Balslev and Henderson) Barfod; Eugenia stipitate McVaugh; Gustavia macarenensis Philipson; Mauritia flexuosa L.f; Myrciaria dubia (Kunth) McVaugh; Oenocarpus bataua Mart; Plukenetia volubilis L.; Pouteria caimito (Ruiz and Pav.) Radlk.; and Solanum quitoense Lam. The analyzed Amazonian fruits contained bioactive compounds such as total polyphenols, flavonoids, carotenoids, and anthocyanins. This information highlights their potential as functional foods and the need for further research on underutilized crops.

This book provides an overview of the World Bank's Eco2 cities: ecological cities as economic cities initiative. The objective of the Eco2 cities initiative is to help cities in developing countries achieve a greater degree of ecological and economic sustainability. The book is divided into three parts. Part one describes the Eco2 cities initiative framework. It describes the approach, beginning with the background and rationale. Key challenges are described, and lessons are drawn from cities that have managed to turn these challenges into opportunities. A set of four key principles is introduced. These principles are the foundation upon which the initiative is built. They are: (1) a city-based approach enabling local governments to lead a development process that takes into account their specific circumstances, including their local ecology; (2) an expanded platform for collaborative design and decision making that accomplishes sustained synergy by coordinating and aligning the actions of key stakeholders; (3) a one-system approach that enables cities to realize the benefits of integration by planning, designing, and managing the whole urban system; and (4) an investment framework that values sustainability and resiliency by incorporating and accounting for life-cycle analysis, the value of all capital assets, and a broader scope for risk assessment in decision making. Part two presents a city-based decision support system that introduces core methods and tools to help cities as they work toward applying some of the core elements and stepping stones. Part two looks into methods for collaborative design and decision making and methods to create an effective long-term framework able to help align policies and the actions of stakeholders. Part three consists of the Field Reference Guide. The guide contains background literature designed to support cities in developing more in-depth insight and fluency with the issues at two levels. It provides a city-by-city and sector-by-sector lens on urban infrastructure. The next section comprises a series of sector notes, each of which explores sector-specific issues in urban development.

This paper mainly studied the key techniques of tropical agricultural products mobile e-commerce based on the field production record information acquisition, agricultural product supply and sales information published online, internet trading, logistics tracking, production traceability, LBS and so on in Hainan. Then discussing the method of establishing and perfecting Internet marketing credit system including production and trade tractability system, quality and safety credit standard during planting, market access rules, authentication mechanism of supplier, published rules of market information for Hainan agricultural products. Lastly, building a new e-commerce platform from the agricultural production plant to sales with mobile phones and other terminals, which could achieve recording farming informations, agricultural product quality traceability, LBS users search and produce marketing sale docking movable and rapid operation.

This paper aims to identify the technological proximity between tropical timber species from the Congo Basin. The analysed properties were correlated with mechanical performances and physical behaviour of glulam and glue joints. Deterministic clustering defines six homogeneous clusters. The fuzzy clustering provides a more refined picture where proximity between species can be quantified as a progressive concept. The results of this analysis may help the development of engineered tropical wood products, namely, glulam while preserving endangered timber species.

Tropical agarwood ( Aquilaria) is in danger of extinction in the wild due to illegal logging. Its resin (Gaharu) is used for the production of highly valued incense throughout Asia. We have isolated and characterized microsatellite loci of Aquilaria crassna to detect the geographic origin of agarwood for forensic applications using a modified enrichment procedure based on the capture of repetitive sequences from restricted genomic DNA. We assessed the polymorphisms of five microsatellites amplified from fresh leaves of 22 trees from seven plantations in Vietnam and Thailand and dried leaves of a herbarium specimen of one wild tree. Cross specificity of these markers was confirmed on two related Aquilaria species occurring in China and Vietnam and one microsatellite locus was successfully amplified from wood and incense samples. Four of the loci were polymorphic and the number of alleles ranged from 3 to 15. The loci characterized here can provide a starting point for forensic identification of traded material and certification of sustainably produced agarwood.

Global Agricultural Trade and Developing Countries presents research findings based on a series of commodity studies of significant economic importance to developing countries. First, the book sets the stage with background chapters and investigations of cross-cutting issues. Trade and domestic policy regimes affecting agricultural and food markets are described, and the resulting patterns of production and trade are assessed. The book follows with an analysis of product standards and costs of compliance and their effects on agricultural and food trade. An investigation of the impact of preferences given to selected countries and their effectiveness is next. The evidence on the attempts to decouple agricultural support from agricultural output is then reviewed. The last background chapter explores the robustness of the global gains of multilateral agricultural and food trade liberalization. Given this context, the book presents detailed commodity studies for coffee, cotton, dairy, fruits and vegetables, groundnuts, rice, seafood products, sugar, and wheat. These markets feature distorted policy regimes among industrial or middle-income countries. The studies analyze current policy regimes in key producing and consuming countries document the magnitude of these distortions and estimates the distributional impacts–winners and losers-of trade and domestic policy reforms. By bringing the key issues and findings together in one place, Global Agricultural Trade and Developing Countries aids policy makers and researchers, both in their approach to global negotiations and in evaluating their domestic policies on agriculture. This book also complements the recently published Agriculture and the WTO that focuses primarily on the agricultural issues within the context of the WTO negotiations.

This chapter contains sections titled: Bibliography

Thousands of plant and animal species in tropical regions provide a variety of non-timber products that are used by billions of people all over the world. Conservation and long term utilization of these species require that they be harvested on a sustainable basis. However, the extent to which non-timber forest products are exploited without adverse effects on natural populations is not known. There is in fact considerable evidence for non-sustainable harvest of non-timber products. We outline methods that may be used to assess the impact of harvest on population processes of the species that are being harvested. We present sampling protocols for rapid assessment as well as long term monitoring of populations. We briefly consider the limitations of these methods and suggest that the monitoring protocols we outline should be part of an overall management plan designed to extract and utilize non-timber tropical forest products on a long term basis.

Aim: Large trees (d.b.h. ≥70 cm) store large amounts of biomass. Several studies suggest that large trees may be vulnerable to changing climate, potentially leading to declining forest biomass storage. Here we determine the importance of large trees for tropical forest biomass storage and explore which intrinsic (species trait) and extrinsic (environment) variables are associated with the density of large trees and forest biomass at continental and pan-tropical scales. Location: Pan-tropical. Methods: Aboveground biomass (AGB) was calculated for 120 intact lowland moist forest locations. Linear regression was used to calculate variation in AGB explained by the density of large trees. Akaike information criterion weights (AICcwi) were used to calculate averaged correlation coefficients for all possible multiple regression models between AGB/density of large trees and environmental and species trait variables correcting for spatial autocorrelation. Results: Density of large trees explained c. 70% of the variation in pan-tropical AGB and was also responsible for significantly lower AGB in Neotropical [287.8 (mean) ± 105.0 (SD) Mg ha⁻¹] versus Palaeotropical forests (Africa 418.3 ± 91.8 Mg ha⁻¹; Asia 393.3 ± 109.3 Mg ha⁻¹). Pan-tropical variation in density of large trees and AGB was associated with soil coarseness (negative), soil fertility (positive), community wood density (positive) and dominance of wind dispersed species (positive), temperature in the coldest month (negative), temperature in the warmest month (negative) and rainfall in the wettest month (positive), but results were not always consistent among continents. Main conclusions: Density of large trees and AGB were significantly associated with climatic variables, indicating that climate change will affect tropical forest biomass storage. Species trait composition will interact with these future biomass changes as they are also affected by a warmer climate. Given the importance of large trees for variation in AGB across the tropics, and their sensitivity to climate change, we emphasize the need for in-depth analyses of the community dynamics of large trees.

Background Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) have long been overlooked in the global health agenda. They are intimately related to poverty, cause important local burdens of disease, but individually do not represent global priorities. Yet, NTDs were estimated to affect close to 2 billion people at the turn of the millennium, with a collective burden equivalent to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, or malaria. A global response was therefore warranted. Main text The World Health Organization (WHO) conceived an innovative strategy in the early 2000s to combat NTDs as a group of diseases, based on a combination of five public health interventions. Access to essential NTD medicines has hugely improved thanks to strong public-private partnership involving the pharmaceutical sector. The combination of a WHO NTD roadmap with clear targets to be achieved by 2020 and game-changing partner commitments endorsed in the London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases , have led to unprecedented progress in the implementation of large-scale preventive treatment, case management and care of NTDs. The coming decade will see as challenges the mainstreaming of these NTD interventions into Universal Health Coverage and the coordination with other sectors to get to the roots of poverty and scale up transmission-breaking interventions. Chinese expertise with the elimination of multiple NTDs, together with poverty reduction and intersectoral action piloted by municipalities and local governments, can serve as a model for the latter. The international community will also need to keep a specific focus on NTDs in order to further steer this global response, manage the scaling up and sustainment of NTD interventions globally, and develop novel products and implementation strategies for NTDs that are still lagging behind. Conclusions The year 2020 will be crucial for the future of the global response to NTDs. Progress against the 2020 roadmap targets will be assessed, a new 2021–2030 NTD roadmap will be launched, and the London Declaration commitments will need to be renewed. It is hoped that during the coming decade the global response will be able to further build on today’s successes, align with the new global health and development frameworks, but also keep focused attention on NTDs and mobilize enough resources to see the effort effectively through to 2030.