This paper is part of a plan to develop the Peña Prieta Institute to bio-prospect on family land between the Bayamo and the Guamá Rivers in the rain forests of the Sierra Maestra of old Oriente Province. These are the lands originally held by seven times wounded Mambí Colonel Don Benjamín Ramírez. On this land […]

This paper addresses technical approaches potentially useful to bioprospecting in Cuba. Previously we addressed the matter in a more general way, discussing the reasons why Cuba is a potentially rich source of bioactive materials of plant origin (Daley, 1997). Definitions of some terms used in the paper are given below in a box. The approaches […]

Notes1 Agricultural extension services are going to be an essential part of rebuilding the Cuban economy after the restoration of democracy. The transition from terribly inefficient and unproductive downwardly-directed mechanisms, now in place, to client-directed, voluntary and open support of agricultural technology poses problems. Especially difficult will be the need to change the mindset of […]

The intent is—in post-Castro Cuba—to establish bio-prospecting laboratories in the rain-forests of eastern Cuba and fund them through a combination of commercial, international agency and U.S. based federal grant funding for visiting researchers. The task of these laboratories will be to seek pharmaco­logically, medically, and agriculturally useful biochemicals among the exceptionally diverse plant, and fungal […]