This week, something really “cool” is happening in the Breadfruit Sector in Mauritius. A Crowd-sourcing Experiment is in progress to locate breadfruit trees in Mauritius. This initiative is by the Food and Agricultural Research Council (FARC) and other partners involved in the Mauritius breadfruit sector consortium. The aim of this stakeholders’ collaboration is to be able to know where we stand, what we want to achieve in the breadfruit sector and hence develop a National Breadfruit Programme.
In my last blog post, I had mentioned about using a wiki for managing a project or group work. A wiki has been created for this breadfruit project in Mauritius and on one of the pages, we have added a link a Google Map, whereby someone who knows where there are breadfruit trees can add the tree to the map. This is quite easy to do by clicking on this LINK.
This link has been shared on Facebook Pages (mainly those which are visited by youths in agriculture) and on the D-group of the Mauritius Agricultural Information Specialist Network (MAISNET). Mauritians who know about the location of these trees are gradually adding them to the map. For the time being, the response is not very high, but still there are some people (mostly those who are related to agriculture) have been contributing.
The pictures below may give an idea about how this is happening:
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| Link shared on Facebook and people responding |
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| This page opens when user clicks on the link |
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| Tree(s) added to the Map and Saved |
Certainly, this activity will not give us the exact number of breadfruit trees in the island, but the consortium will have an idea about the location of these trees and at the same time, we will be able to see the interest of Mauritians in this type of activity and about the breadfruit sector.There may also be some disadvantages of this process, for example someone may not be sure if it is the tree in question and provide the wrong information. But this is only a first step, and the following ones will depend on the response of this activity.
Personally, I am enjoying it because I am looking for the tree wherever I am travelling and when I spot a tree, I’m adding it to the map! 🙂
If you are reading this post and you know where there are breadfruit trees in Mauritius, do not hesitate to add them on the map. Have a look at the tutorial below which will help you to do so. Thanks!
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