German botanist Rolf Blancke, a long-time resident of Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, and Zona Tropical Publications are seeking funding on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter.com to publish the most comprehensive book for the general reader ever produced on tropical fruits of the world, with descriptions of over 330 fruit species, lush photographs, and range maps.

If funded, the book will be released in early 2013.

The project may be viewed here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/584232123/tropical-fruits-of-the-world/backers.

On August 17, Zona Tropical Publications began its 30-day promotional campaign on crowd-funding site Kickstarter.com and has raised over a quarter of it’s goal, $2,083 of $7,500 with Costa Rican pledges included.

Zona Tropical seeks to raise funds to subsidize photography and research trips to Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and, possibly, Indonesia), Latin America (Puerto Rico, Ecuador, and Honduras), and Miami. Donors will have the option to fund at levels from $5 and above and, in turn, will receive gifts such as fruit postcards, tropical fruits of the world poster, credits in the book, trips to Costa Rica, and more.

Current medical research unequivocally demonstrates the vital importance of fruit in our daily diet, and more and more tropical fruits are beginning to appear in supermarkets in North America and Europe. In addition, interest in tropical rainforests—and their conservation— continues to grow. This book will give non-experts a better understanding of tropical fruits in an effort to improve diets, motivate conservation efforts, and to educate.

From his home on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, botanist Rolf Blancke cultivates and studies tropical fruits. His previous publications include a title about topiary gardens, another on flowering plants of Central America and the Caribbean, and a third booklet in German on tropical fruits.

This new book, his most ambitious project to date, is the culmination of a lifelong obsession with plants of all kinds, especially those that grow in the tropics, and it has given him the opportunity to indulge in his other passions—travel and nature photography.

Zona Tropical Publications started in 1996 in San José, Costa Rica, and has published 18 books to date, and is at work on another 17 titles, along with e-book and app projects. Titles published so far include several field guides, among them The Birds of Costa Rica and Tropical Plants of Cost Rica (both co-published with Cornell University Press), and photography books, including a title about the Osa Peninsula by award winning photographer Roy Toft and Princeton University biologist Trond Larsen.

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MEDIA CONTACT:
John K.McCuen
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