The Role of Homegarden Agroforestry in Biodiversity Conservation at Yayo Coffee Forest Biosphere Reserve, Chora District, South-western Ethiopia

Gemeda Terfassa

doi:10.11648/j.eeb.20210603.12

Abstract

Traditional homegardens in southwest Ethiopia is well-known land use practices playing important role in biodiversity conservation aspects. The objective of this study was to examine the contribution of homegardens towards of biodiversity conservation. Homegarden plant diversity assessment was done. A simple random sampling method was used to select 45 homegardens. Diversity indices were used for analysis. A total of 79 plant species belonging to 41 families were identified. Family Fabaceae and Rutaceae have a relatively higher number of species (6 species each). In terms of habit, (34%) of the species were herbs followed by trees (30%), shrubs (27%) and climbers (9%). Farmers manage both exotic (61%) and indigenous (39%), from which 57% were food and 43% nonfood plant species. The Shannon, Simpson and evenness diversity indexes were 3.27, 0.053 and 0.87 respectively. Coffea arabica was the most frequent (86.67%) species followed by Persea americana (68.89) and Catha edulis (64.44) in homegardens of the area. This study suggests that homegardens contribute to plant biodiversity conservation in the study area. However, due to few market-oriented crops concentration, biodiversity of the system have been affected. Thus, gardeners should be encouraged to cultivate versatile plants in the practice for effective biodiversity conservation.

Highlights

Plant Diversity A total of 79 plant species belonging to 41 families were recorded from homegardens of the study area
The most commonly represented family was Rutaceae containing the largest number of species (7 species), followed by Fabaceae and Rosacaea that represented six and five species respectively (Table 3). This result is slightly similar with a finding of [43], who reported that a total of 94 plant species representing 41 families in homegardens of the surrounding area, around Yayo Coffee Forest Biosphere Reserve (YCFBR)
Homegarden agroforestry practices in YCFBR plays a remarkable role in biodiversity conservation in transitional of the biosphere

Summary

Introduction

Agroforestry is a dynamic land use practices that maintain overall farm productivity by combining herbaceous food crops with woody perennial and livestock on the same piece of land. Homegardens are among agroforestry practices with the most complex and diverse agroecosystem that have been developed by numerous human cultures worldwide. They played an important role towards the development of early agriculture and domestication of crops. Homegardens often show a promising option for biodiversity conservation and mitigation of ecosystem degradation. In some cases, they were found to be effective as natural forests in the conservation of tree species diversity [1, 34, 26]

Methods

Results

Conclusion