ABSTRACT
The countries of eastern Africa (Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda) and the Indian Ocean Islands (Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles) are endowed with a great wealth of plant genetic resources and biodiversity. This makes the eastern Africa region one of the world’s most important biodiversity sites. Its heterogeneous environmental conditions and the diverse cultural history of the people make the region an important primary and secondary gene centre for many cultivated species, serving as an economically and ecologically important source of germplasm. It is one of the world’s regions where crop plants were originally domesticated from wild species. Crops originally domesticated outside of the eastern Africa highlands exhibit extreme secondary diversification in eastern Africa. Numerous useful genetic variations of global significance have emanated at the local farm and farm community level.
