Domestication, Utilization and Marketing of Indigenous Fruit Trees in West and Central Africa - Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization - page 171

9

Domestication, Utilization and
Marketing of Indigenous Fruit
Trees in West and Central Africa

Z. T CHOUNDJEU , 1 A. A TANGANA , 1 E. A SAAH , 1
A. T SOBENG , 1 C. F ACHEUX , 1 D. F OUNDJEM , 1 C. M BOSSO , 1
A. D EGRANDE , 1 T. S ADO , 1 J. K ANMEGNE , 1 P. M BILE , 1
H. T ABUNA , 1 P. A NEGBEH 2 AND M. U SENI 3

1 ICRAF West and Central Africa Region, Humid Tropic Node, Yaounde
Cameroon ; 2 ICRAF West and Central Africa Region, Humid Tropic Node,
IITA Station, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria ; 3 ICRAF West and
Central Africa Region, Humid Tropic Node, ICRAF Office, Kinshasa,
Democratic Republic of Congo

9.1 Introduction

The participatory domestication of high-value fruit and nut trees and medicinal
plants has been ongoing in West and Central Africa since 1998 (Tchoundjeu et
al ., 1998, 2006). Key species for domestication were jointly identified by
researchers and farmers after priorities had been set in four countries of the
region (Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana and Nigeria) (Franzel et al ., 1996). Tree
domestication is executed as a farmer-driven and market-led process (Simons
and Leakey, 2004) encompassing socio-economic and biophysical processes
research as defined during the first tree domestication conference held in
Edinburgh in 1992 (Leakey and Newton, 1994). It aims to significantly increase
and stabilize the income, food and health of rural households and their
extended families through improvement of agroforestry tree products (Simons
and Leakey, 2004; Tchoundjeu et al ., 2006). This is being done through the
selection and propagation of trees with desirable traits (Atangana et al ., 2002;
Tchoundjeu et al ., 2006) for the development of cultivars well adapted to
different cropping systems, where their integration contributes to the diversity
and sustainability of the farming system. Participatory tree domestication also
seeks to ensure that women and other vulnerable groups obtain maximum
benefit from agroforestry activities (Schreckenberg et al ., 2002, 2006), while
enhancing environmental health at landscape level (Wiersum, 1996).