Ethnophytopathology: Rice Fields Free of Diseases, from the Culture of Producers in a Nuquí, Chocó-Colombia´s Community

Abstract

In addition to inquiring about the knowledge of Nuqui producers, the goal of this research was to prove that the fields of healthy rice plants were set in a specific landscape, which is different to the landscape where rice plants managed with fungicides are located; the composition and structure of the landscapes were determined through participant observation, bibliographic resources and photographic records. The study variables were defined in order to perform correspondence and conglomerate/cluster analysis, both univariate and bivariate. There are two clusters, Nuqui and Lerida, and the index number of different species for Nuqui-Choco was higher compared with that of Lerida-Tolima, which indicates that Nuqui producers usually establish their rice fields among vegetable species such as weeds, shrubbery, and trees and preserved a very particular structure of landscape, allowing them to maintain their crops free of diseases.