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 404

communities have ownership and are more confident in testing and adapting
innovations.
When carefully planned and implemented, this approach facilitates
adoption and reduces the long process of technology transfer from research
stations to the farmers (Leakey et al. , 2005; Chapter 6, this volume), and also
avoids the replacement of landraces with improved varieties, which causes
genetic erosion (Chapter 6). Participatory domestication approaches have been
applied in West Africa for Dacryodes edulis and Irvingia gabonensis
(Tchoundjeu et al. , 2006; Chapter 9, this volume), Uapaca kirkiana and
Strychnos cocculoides in Malawi (Chapter 8), and for Bactris gasipaes and Inga
edulis in Peru (Weber et al. , 2001; Chapter 6, this volume). The participatory
clonal selection strategy in southern Africa involved the following activities
(Akinnifesi et al. , 2006): (i) priority-setting using stakeholder workshops; (ii)
household surveys and market surveys; (iii) product prioritization; (iv)
identifying natural stands of priority IFTs through reconnaissance surveys; (v)
village workshops to define fruit traits and joint selection of elite cultivars with
communities - farmers, marketers, village leaders and schoolchildren; (vi)
systematic naming of trees, collection of seeds and vegetative propagules,
nursery evaluation, and field orchard testing of clonal selections until a smaller
number of true-to-type and true-to-name cultivars were obtained; (vii) release
of superior cultivars for adoption, testing and scaling-up. Detailed principles
and strategies for participatory domestication based on clonal selection and
vegetative propagation have been described by Leakey and Akinnifesi
(Chapter 2). Cornelius et al. (2006) and Weber et al. (2001) have detailed its
application to seedlings.

21.3.5 Propagation as a tool for improvement

Participatory domestication, in which farmers are trained to use vegetative
propagation techniques, would enable farmers in different locations to select
cultivars for different sets of characteristics, thus ensuring in the short to
medium term that farm-level inter- and intraspecific diversity is maintained
(Leakey et al. , 1990, 2003; Akinnifesi et al. , 2006a; Schreckenberg et al. , 2006;
Tchoundjeu et al. , 2006; Chapters 2, 8, 9, this volume).
Mature tissues have the capacity to flower and fruit, and can be multiplied
or captured through grafting, budding and air-layering (Leakey et al. , 1990,
2005; Chapters 2, 8-10, this volume), and micropropagation (Mng'omba,
2007; Mng'omba et al. , 2007a, b). Because of the ease of propagating juvenile
tissues by cuttings, this has been the preferred option for participatory
domestication of short-gestation fruit trees such as Dacryodes edulis in village
nurseries in West Africa (Leakey et al. , 2005; Chapter 9, this volume). In
addition, the tissue culture of juvenile tissues has proved more successful than
that of matured tissues for miombo fruit trees such as U. kirkiana (Mn'gomba,
2007; Mn'gomba et al. , 2007a). Stem cutting was unsuccessful for most
miombo fruit trees (Mhango and Akinnifesi, 2001; Akinnifesi et al. , 2004a,
2006), and the tissue culture of U. kirkiana

was limited by phenolic