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 403

Technically, wild harvesting for industrial production has often suffered
some setbacks. Excessive variation of wild collection could constitute a
deterrent for the large-scale market. For instance, the government of Peru
promoted large-scale cultivation of camu camu ( Myrciaria dubia ) during
1995-1997. The state agencies produced large quantities of grafted planting
stock in order to produce trees that would fruit earlier than those from
seedlings, about 2 years after planting. The flaw was that grafting was done
without selection of the rootstock or scions for any desirable traits, thereby
foregoing the opportunity for crop improvement (Penn, 2006). Eighty-six per
cent of the camu camu harvested or planted on farmer's fields in Peru comes
from wild stocks (Penn, 2006). These trees commonly experience single or
double fruiting cycles that have not been captured by research. Pest
management is a major problem yet to be resolved in the domestication of
camu camu. Although farmers prune their camu camu trees, it is not done
based on research results, and farmers indicated that they were unsure which
tree form would ultimately produce more fruit.
Another example where a potentially successful initiative to develop
international markets failed was when the natural variation and need for trait
improvement was overlooked by a private farm in Coroata, Brazil. The
company had received a long-term contract to supply organically produced
acerola ( Malpighia glabra ) fruits to the European market in the 1990s. The
project embarked on large-scale plantation of the acerola, but with no prior
knowledge of selection. Four years down the line, fruit harvests were rejected
for the targeted market because of excessive variability in fruit traits. The farm
was forced to sell the produce at local markets to cushion the loss. These are
just a few cases, where omission of carefully planned and executed
domestication has resulted in catastrophic financial losses.
In general, domestication approaches have followed two broad patterns:
forestry and horticultural. The former involves species performance testing,
such as germplasm collection of several Amazonian fruits in Brazil, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Equador and Peru by EMBRAPA and INPA (Chapter 6), and the
testing of several indigenous fruit tree species in arboreta at Onne and Ibadan,
Nigeria (Ng et al. , 1992; Kang et al. , 1994). The latter focuses on fruits and
relies heavily on local knowledge for selection and vegetative propagation to
achieve precocity.
21.3.4 Participatory tree domestication strategy
Participatory domestication is defined as genetic improvement that includes
farmer-researcher collaboration, and is farmer-led and market-driven. It was
devised to overcome the shortcomings of the earlier top-down approaches of
conventional breeding and forestry (Akinnifesi et al. , 2004a; Tchoundjeu et al. ,
2006; Chapter 2, this volume). In this approach, farmers express their
preferences and interests freely, and contribute to the planning and technology
development through indigenous technical knowledge infused into the process
from time to time as they are being consulted. By so doing, rural farmers and