Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
2.6 Socio-economic and Environmental Context for this Strategy
In the introduction to this chapter it was stated that a domestication strategy for
clonal forestry/agroforestry in the tropics should take into account not only the
commercial production of agroforestry tree products but also the need to provide
the domestic needs of rural people, encourage sustainable systems of production,
and encourage the restoration of degraded land. There is debate in southern
Africa about the impacts of poverty on the natural resources of very many African
countries, especially those in southern Africa. The domestication of indigenous
plants as new, improved crop species for complex agroforestry land uses offers
the opportunity to return to more sustainable polycultural systems, to build on
traditional and cultural uses of local plants, and to enhance the income of
subsistence farmers through the sale of indigenous fruits, medicines, oils, gums,
fibres, etc. (Leakey, 2003). Indeed, it has been argued that the biological and
economic constraints on the wider use of indigenous trees in agroforestry can be
overcome by cloning techniques and that the economic incentives should
promote cultivation with the ecologically more important indigenous species. This
approach to agroforestry has been recommended as a sound policy for land use
in Africa (Leakey, 2001a, b). Potentially, through enhanced food and nutritional
security, the domestication of indigenous fruits may even have positive impacts
on HIV/AIDS (Swallow et al ., 2007), by boosting the immune systems of sufferers
(Barany et al ., 2003). Consequently, the application of the strategies developed
in this chapter is important if the people of Africa are to benefit from the
domestication of indigenous trees.
2.7 Conclusions
This chapter presents three interacting, multifaceted strategies for the develop-
ment of clonal fruit trees in southern Africa. These strategies are the foundation
of a sustainable domestication strategy for indigenous fruit trees based on the
establishment of three interlinked populations: a gene resource population for
genetic conservation; a selection population for the achievement of genetic
improvement; and a production population of trees for farmers to grow. The
practice of domesticating a species using these strategies is cyclical and
therefore continuous.
Vegetative propagation is a powerful means of capturing existing genetic
traits and fixing them so that they can be used as the basis of a clonal cultivar,
or in a different role as a research variable. The desirability of using clonal
cultivars in preference to genetically diverse seedling populations varies
depending on the situation and the type of trees to be propagated. However,
the advantages of clonal propagules outweigh those of seedlings when the
products are valuable, when the tree has a long generation time, and when the
seeds are scarce or difficult to keep in storage.
There are many opportunities to enhance agroforestry practices through
the wise application of vegetative propagation and clonal selection. These
techniques in turn offer many ways of creating new and greatly improved crop
Search WWH ::




Custom Search