Tropical Botany and Ethnobiology Lab (TRIBE) studies tropical and subtropical useful plants, other biota and their environment with the aim to preserve plant species diversity and related traditional knowledge in natural ecosystems and agricultural landscapes. Studies of traditional knowledge of indigenous people and small-scale farmers on use patterns, management and ecology of the most culturally important as well as neglected and underutilized plant species as sources of food, medicine and materials are of our special interest. Principal research activities include ethnobiological/ethnobotanical inventories and market surveys, documentation of traditional ecological knowledge in different cultural groups, migrants’ ethnobotany, agrobiodiversity management in homegardens and allotments, informal seed systems along with agrobiodiversity conservation, and wild food plants’ ethnobotany. Taxonomy of tropical and subtropical plants, particularly wild and locally cultivated food species, form a significant part of TRIBE’s expertize.
From a development perspective, the TRIBE’s research contributes to the understanding and scaling up the importance of particular plant resources in local food and agricultural systems especially in the context of livelihood, health sovereignty and nutrition-sensitive agriculture.
We believe that research raising awareness on importance and potential of useful biodiversity among local communities, academia, and policy makers may contribute substantially to the human well-being and rural development while preserving biological and cultural diversity.
The vision of TRIBE is to become a prestigious lab with strong expertize in tropical botany, including an internationally recognized herbarium and a living plant collection in frame of The Botanical Garden of the Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague.