Accelerated Domestication and Commercialization of Indigenous Fruit and Nut Trees to Enhance Better Livelihoods in the Tropics: Lessons and Way Forward - Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization - page 397

are protected; (ii) enriched natural forests through deliberate regeneration or
planting of propagules; (iii) 'cyclic agroforests' or forest gardens; (iv) mixed
arboriculture, e.g. homegardens; and (v) monoculture fruit-tree plantations or
orchards (Wiersum, 1997; Chapter 4, this volume). Creative farmers have
evolved these systems in Asia (Caradang et al. , 2006; Chapter 4, this volume),
Latin America (Dubois et al ., 1996; Penn, 2006; Chapter 6, this volume) and
Africa (Okafor, 1983; Kang and Akinnifesi, 2000; Leakey et al. , 2005). The
trajectories of change in such systems vary and depend on various ecological,
biological and socio-economic and political factors. According to Wiersum
(Chapter 4), smallholder farmers gradually change their fruit-tree production
systems from wild collection to more specialized fruit arboricultural orchard
management, while at the same time modifying species composition and
management. The durian ( D. zibethinus ) forest garden in Asia, Brazil nut
( Bertholletia spp.) or bacuri forest gardens or 'açaiceiro' in Brazil are examples.
How the products can be better adapted to meet market demand will require
deliberate domestication and improvement initiatives.
Despite the availability of fruits in the wild, improvements in fruit yield and
earlier fruiting (i.e. shortened juvenile phase or enhanced precocity) would
create incentives to farmers to cultivate indigenous fruit trees, even though such
an incentive depends on the robustness of the improvement impact and factors
negatively affecting fruit abundance (Mithöfer and Waibel, 2003; Fiedler, 2004).
Domestication activities are essential if a tangible commercial interest in
indigenous fruits is to emerge beyond the current opportunistic levels. However,
it is important to recognize that success is dependent on the domestication and
commercialization of indigenous fruit trees occurring in parallel (Wynberg et al .,
2003, Akinnifesi et al ., 2004a, 2006; Chapter 8, this volume), in order that
problems of the seasonality and reliability of supply, diversity and inconsistency
of fruit quality are overcome throughout the supply chain.
A global analysis of the marketing and cultivation of wild forest products
has found that farmers who engaged in the cultivation of indigenous fruits had
higher returns on labour, used more intensive production technologies,
produced more per hectare and benefited from a more stable resource base,
than those relying on wild collection (Ruiz-Perez et al ., 2004). These studies,
therefore, suggest that the cultivation of wild fruit trees will become more
important as rural households move from subsistence to a cash-oriented
economy.
21.3 User-driven Domestication Approaches
21.3.1 What species to domesticate
Agroforestry fruit tree products (AFTPs) can be divided into four categories: (i)
those that are readily edible (mostly with sweet non-toxic or astringent fruit pulp
when ripe); (ii) those requiring cooking before being consumed (e.g. breadfruit,
most nuts, edible oils); (iii) those requiring intensive processing into other forms
(e.g. wine, jam, chocolate, etc.); and (iv) non-edible fruit and nut products (e.g.