Juan Camilo Osorio Ospina is part of the biology masters student at Bangor University in Wales, a joint degree with University of Lisbon and Rey Juan Carlos University. Juan Camilo is studying global change ecology and biodiversity management.
For his outreach project, Juan Camilo created an online resource to learn more about David Fairchild’s life and his contributions to neotropical research, botanical gardens and the American diet. As a plant explorer, David Fairchild traveled the world working for the USDA’s seed introduction program and played an important role in introducing foods such as avocados, mangos to Florida, many cultivars of grapes to California and more. This work was inspired by the Fairchild biography, “The World Was My Garden” and the book “The Food Explorer”, inspiring questions about the origins of the common foods. For this reason, Juan Camilo created a website which features information about Fairchild’s life, a timeline of his world travels, a catalog of species introduced through Fairchild’s expeditions, illustrated with USDA watercolors, and an interactive map showing various collections from countries around the world. To see Juan’s great work and to learn more about how David Fairchild has influenced many of the foods we eat today, you can explore his website here.
