Domestication of Trees or Forests: Development Pathways for Fruit Tree Production in South-east Asia - Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization - page 80

domestication. For instance, how biodiversity impacts on production conditions
(Siebert, 2002; Schroth et al. , 2004b) or how the processes of synergy and
competition between plants can be balanced (Wiersum, 2004). Another
interesting question is whether and how the vegetation and species
composition of the forest gardens could be further adapted to meet production
requirements. This might require a new approach to selecting and breeding
high-yielding tree varieties, which can be cultivated in the forest rather than in a
plantation environment (Wibawa et al. , 2005).

4.5 Conclusions

The domestication of a tree species involves the manipulation and cultivation
of trees for specific uses. Domestication of fruit trees is a multifaceted process in
which a progressively closer interaction between people and trees takes place.
This process consists of three dimensions:

● Acculturation : the incorporation of trees in an increasingly complex social

environment through the formation of management entities and the
formulation of objectives as well as rules for tree utilization and
management.

● Modification of the biophysical environment : the protection and stimulation

of production of useful trees in natural forests, the (partial) clearing of
natural forests followed by the planting of useful wild species, as well as the
manipulation of the biophysical environment to stimulate production of the
valuable tree species.

● Modification of a tree's biological characteristics : the manipulation of its

morphological and genetic characteristics.

The utilization of tree species usually starts with the exploitation of trees
from natural forests. Gradually, uncontrolled utilization of the wild tree products
is changed to controlled exploitation. Subsequently, wild trees may be
purposefully cultivated in either resource-enriched (fallow) vegetation systems or
in (indigenous) multistoreyed production systems such as forest gardens. The
cultivation of selected varieties of tree in either mixed tree plantations or
commercial tree-crop plantations is the last phase of this domestication process.
Each of these phases is characterized by specific conditions with respect to social
production conditions and management objectives as well as ecological
conditions and requirements for biological characteristics of fruit trees.
The recognition of these various stages of the domestication process is of
importance for understanding the scope for domestication of fruit trees. It
allows better understanding of the various options for fruit tree production
under different land-use conditions in the continuum between natural forests
and commercial plantation with high-yielding cultivars. It illustrates that efforts
to domesticate fruit trees should focus on integrating biological and ecological
considerations with social aspirations, and that it should increasingly focus on
addressing a variety of production systems rather than assuming one ideal
typical production system. It also allows the identification of new approaches