Plant list for dry tropics

Hi,
what resources are there which are specific for the dry tropics (such as areas of Costa Rica such as in the Guanacaste region, Nosara)
I am looking at both productive plants for food, medicinal, timber, etc. and support plants like legumes
I guess that many wet tropics and subtropics plants  may work there provided there is irrgation on dry periods.
Cheers

Hi Antonio,

Do you plan on living or working in Costa Rica? Because my first suggestion is to walk around there a bit and see what's growing. Costa Rica is the largest diversity of wildlife in the whole world, so I coubt you'll be lacking for resources once you're on the ground. Native is best.

Having said that, there are some very hardy species that come to mind.

For food: cassava, carob, pigeon pea, sweet potato, coffee, chocolate. Looks like May through October you've got enough precipiation to cultivate most warm-climate crops.

For medicine and timber, best get your info on the ground. But you could start with the Guanacaste tree

Having just returned from Nicaragua, I can say that teak is a fast growing and valuable timber crop that is dry tolerant. The huanacaste tree is beautiful and also Moringa is a culturally important, nutritional and  valuable tree. Other things that work well there are squash beans and corn, of course, having been tried and tested for thousands of years, we also had good luck with kale, pak choi, melons, cherry and roma tomatoes, hot peppers, but these of course need irrigation. There is a permaculture institute in Guatemala that has seeds and information. https://imapermacultura.org/

I haven't been to that region of Costa Rica so I'm not sure how dry your dry is, but there are lots of resources for "Dryland Permaculture"  if you google, this article should give you a start. https://www.permaculturenews.org/2015/03/16/support-species-for-a-dryland-food-forest-a-practical-example/

I'm particularly found of Desert Harvesters out of Tuscan, Arizona, because they produce materials in English and Spanish and they have recipes for plants you might not be familiar with!
https://desertharvesters.org/


T