Central America

“Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan need to be top foreign policy priorities for President Barack Obama,” says Thomas Schweich, former ambassador for counternarcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan and visiting professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Schweich, the Special Representative for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, is available to discuss foreign policy issues facing the next president.

Allison Miller discusses jocotes with a man in southern Honduras.Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis report that farmers and families in Central America have saved genetic variation in the jocote (ho-CO-tay), (Spondias purpurea), a small tree that bears fruit similar to a tiny mango. And they’ve done this by taking the plants out of the forest, their wild habitat, and growing them close to home for family and local consumption Allison Miller, Ph.D., a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Colorado, and former graduate student in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, and Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology Barbara Schaal, Ph.D., from Washington University, in conjunction with Peter Raven, Ph.D. Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University and Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, have shown multiple domestications of the jocote in Central America in the midst of large-scale deforestation, a practice that endangers genetic diversity .