Homegarden-based Indigenous Fruit Tree Production in Peninsular India - Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization - page 95

5.8 Tree Domestication Programme for Homegardens
Historically, tree domestication was mostly intuitive. Local people learned to
determine visually which trees produced better fruit quality, size and other
desirable characteristics. Modern domestication strategies, however, may involve
a range of activities such as 'nurturing wild plants through to plant breeding
through to genetic modification in vitro ' (Simons and Leakey, 2004). This may
be a scale-neutral technology, which benefits resource-poor and resource-rich
farmers alike; whereas, with most other new technologies, farmers with the
larger and better-endowed lands tend to gain the most, and income disparities
are often accentuated. New initiatives in agroforestry everywhere are seeking to
integrate more and more indigenous trees, whose products have traditionally
been gathered from natural forests (Leakey and Tchoundjeu, 2001).
There are many tree species in the Kerala homegardens which have
commercial potential in the local, regional or even international markets (Table 5.1).
Through selection, it is possible to achieve rapid and substantial genetic
improvements of these trees. Additionally, many potentially useful species exist in
nearby forests (Muraleedharan et al. , 2005). Domestication is a dynamic process in
which genetic and cultivation aspects are continuously refined. This would probably
require the sustained exploration and collection of natural or anthropogenic
populations and the evaluation and selection of suitable species and provenances.
Such domestication processes may conserve the genetic diversity of indigenous
species (e.g. Mangifera indica ) and ease pressure on wild populations (e.g.
Sapindus emarginatus , Emblica officinalis , Hydnocarpus pentandra ). Although
participatory domestication, multiplication and dissemination of planting materials
by key farmers has been advocated (Weber et al ., 2001), not much headway has
been made in India. Strategic approaches to domestication may help avoid the
potential pitfalls of traditional methods, such as introducing narrow genetic
bottlenecks, using maladapted materials, or focusing on exotics.
5.8.1 Plant propagation
Once an appropriate species/population has been identified, providing farmers
with high-quality propagules in a timely manner is a key challenge in tree
domestication. In several cases, the best types are identified, multiplied by
vegetative means, and distributed among farmers. Examples include the cross-
pollinated species such as jack (Nazeem et al ., 1984; Kelaskar et al ., 1993),
mango (Arora and Rao, 1998), Indian gooseberry (Tewari and Bajpai, 2005)
and Garcinia gummi-gutta (Muthulakshmi et al ., 1999; Nair et al. , 2005). In
some cases, tissue-culture protocols have also been standardized (e.g.
Rajmohan and Mohanakumaran, 1988; Puri and Swamy, 1999; Mishra et al .,
2005). Problems of seed storability, dormancy and aspects of nursery stock
production, and also those relating to protection and product utilization, have
been addressed (Mathew and George, 1995; Yadav, 1998), albeit in a limited
way. Despite the studies reported, standardization of the propagation
techniques has been one of the greatest challenges of fruit-tree domestication.