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 ome people collect stamps, or train numbers, or sightings of rare birds. Others combine their passion for collecting with a determimation to save the genetic resources we need to feed future generations.
Earlier this year, a multidisciplinary team returned from a long, hot day's walk into Wadi Saloufa and Wadi Abou Grouf, in Egypt. The party was tired--but very excited about the native vegetation they collected there. The collection trip was a part of the activities of the Marsa Matrouh Resource Management Project (MRMP) in Egypt, which is supported by the World Bank and the International Development Association.
The party consisted of Drs Henry Le Houérou (Consultant botanist, MRMP), the author (ICARDA), Nabil Nabawi (Soil Scientist, SWERI--the Soil, Water and Environment Research Institute, part of the Egyptian national program), Mr Taher Kasser (Extension Specialist, MRMP), Mr Nick Thomas (GIS Specialist, ICARDA) and François Delaroque (GIS trainee from the Geographical Institute for Regional Land Management at Nantes University, France, known by its French acronym of IGARUN).
On the face of it, it is not a good hunting ground for biodiversity. The area receives enough rain not to be called a desert: just over 130 mm/year on the coast. But that is not much, and the rainfall drops drastically about 10-20 kilometres from the coast where the real desert starts: flat bare rocky land gently sloping towards the coast just with a
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few sand patches, and nearly no vegetation.
But this is the beauty of it: the entire bare rocky and sandy plateau is an extraordinary water-harvesting system. It catches every drop of rain and sometimes gently, sometimes savagely takes most of this harvested water to the coast. First it dribbles to shallow depressions cropped with barley patching the plateau, but most of it goes to the coastal plain. To get there, it runs off the plateau through wadis filled with figs, olive trees and grapes. These wadis have fed the prehistoric tribes, the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, the Byzantines and now the present Egyptian farmer. These wadis are a blessing for the local population and they have known for millennia how to make the best use of every drop of water coming from the plateau into the wadis.
The chaotic rocks, cliffs and deep gullies in these wadis protect these plants from uprooting and overgrazing. It is not easy, and often not worth the trouble, for the shepherd and his flock to get into some of these narrow and steep wadis. Moreover, these wadi tips are owned by individual landlords and are not
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usually open to common grazing. Given the concentration of water from the plateau above, this makes these wadis exceptional natural reserves in a very arid environment.
Dr Le Houérou has listed no less than 57 plants species in Wadi Salloufa itself and 37 on its northwest slope. Among them is a small tree, Rhamnus oleoides, abundant here but rare elsewhere in the region. There are also several useful fodder shrubs--such as Periploca angustifolia, once found on the plateau and now taking refuge into the wadis, and potentially good for range rehabilitation; Ephedra aphylla (a medicinal plant) hanging from the cliffs, and a perennial and woody Silene fruticosa. Here and there, the team found the yellow-flowered, untouched and endemic Verbascum letourneuxii. Very abundant and unexpected also is Dactylis glomerata (var. hispanica), the famous cooksfoot (now Europeanized)
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