干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The decade of the 1990s has seen a great expansion in national and international cooperative research and development on cactus, including plant physiology and orchard management, new Opuntia hybrids, descriptor list for Opuntias, intensive breeding and selection work on columnar and vine fruit cacti, new commercially available processed products of cactus pears and various major international symposia to integrate researchers and professionals of different fields worldwide. While a mixture of basic and applied research is still required in critical areas, the scientific database is now sufficiently mature to guide international development efforts. Based on our experiences, this paper suggests priorities for basic and applied research of scientists from different fields.