Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
7.3
TRIBAL COMMUNITIES
The archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar Islands is home of six primitive
tribes namely Nicobarese, Great Andamanese, Jarawa, Shompen, Onges
and Sentenales which are meeting up their food and medicinal needs from
the flora and fauna of islands (Singh et al., 2011b). The Settlement plans
also brought different communities including Bengali, Tamil, Telugu,
Ranchi, Malayali, Odiya and others in islands from mainland India, which
depict a mini-India phenomenon. About 38 of 572 islands inhabited hav-
ing 94% landmass with about 3.5-lakh population. These communities are
largely depends on local plant sources for meeting their food, feed and
medicines (Rao et al., 2006). Some of the local plant foods like ferns,
orchids and flowering plants are having specific climatic requirements for
growth and developmental stages. The expected climate change associated
factors like rising temperature, increasing humidity and frequent cyclones
will be changing the crop physiology and adaptation. Resultantly, the crop
structure and cropping sequences will be affected by the climate change
phenomena. Thus, proper strategies need to be designed to ensure the tra-
ditional food resources for tribal communities in the expected phenomena
of climate change. The underutilized fruits and vegetables are traditional
sources of tribal diets need to be investigated with climate change asso-
ciated factors, particularly for flowering and fruit setting parameters be-
cause, these two stages are most sensitive to climatic changes.
7.4 TOURIST DESTINATION AND REQUIREMENT OF QUALITY
FOODS
Since the archipelago is emerging tourist destination and the demand of
quality perishable food items like fruits and vegetables will be high in
coming years. But, local production of commercial vegetables is confined
to the dry spell of December to April. Around 22000 tones of vegetables
and fruits are being transported from mainland every year. This is drain-
ing back the island economy to mainland and hindering the local devel-
opment. But, changing climatic parameters like temperature, relative hu-
midity, CO
2
level and frequencies of climatic adversaries will be further
affecting the productivity of fruits and vegetables. Further, unscientific
use of chemicals in locally grown fruits and vegetables deteriorate their
