Wild Fruits Traditionally Gathered by the Malinke Ethnic Group in the Edge of Niokolo Koba Park (Senegal)

Abstract

In rural areas, the local population draws from several forest resources needed for survival including food. Then it is a granary for these native people. Unfortunately, useful wild plants are highly threatened, especially by various human activities. Because of this situation we started with open semi-structured interviews to identify wild fruit plants, their consumed organs and their seasonality in the rural community of Tomboronkoto. Tomboronkoto is located at the edge of the Niokolo-Koba National park (Senegal) and is mainly inhabited by Malinke. We identified 45 wild fruit species belonging to 38 genera that can be divided in 28 botanical families. The more diversified are successively the Anacardiaceae, Tiliaceae, Apocynaceae and Caesalpiniaceae. More than half of the plants inventoried are trees (53%). We can distinguish three categories of fruits depending on their Fidelity Level (FL) that informs us about their popularity: the well-known or common fruits, moderately known fruits and little known fruits. A dozen wild fruits happen to be greatly appreciated with very high fidelity level (100% to 84%). The fruits of Saba senegalensis, Adansonia digitata, Parkia biglobosa, Tamarindus indica and Vitellaria paradoxa are the most variously used because they are appreciated being fresh or cooked. Only fruits of Ficussur are available all year long. The large majority of the most consumed fruits are available between the end of the hot dry season until the middle of the rainy season. This period coincides with the period where crops from the previous rainy season are depleted and the new crops are not yet ripe. Thus, these wild fruits would greatly contribute to food security in this area during the lean period.