ISHS Acta Horticulturae 53: IV Africa Symposium on Horticultural Crops
NEGLECTED PLANTS OF HORTICULTURAL AND NUTRITIONAL IMPORTANCE IN TRADITIONAL FARMING SYSTEMS OF TROPICAL AFRICA |
| Author: | B.N. Okigbo |
| DOI: | 10.17660/ActaHortic.1977.53.18 |
| Abstract:
""If Africa appears to have provided little for other continents, it is because Africa is only beginning to be known, and because it is a continent hard on man, and for a number of reasons, exhausted and extremely difficult to rehabilitate. It is also the case that much confusion has reigned and still reigns about the origin of some major plants used for food. Nevertheless, Africa gave the world coffee, oil palms, cereal, sorghums, Bulrush or Pearl millets (Pennisetum) etc."", Porteres (1962). Although Burkill (1955) postulated that domestication of woody or perennial fruit trees took place long after the domestication of cereals, pulses, short lived greens, roots and tubers, etc., Porteres (1962) who is credited with the above quotation studied the indigenous food plants of Africa and their domestication, and concluded that the continent evolved two agricultural complexes, namely the seed agricultural complex characteristic of the open unforested regions analogous to the savannahs of today and the vegecultural complex which is peculiar to forested regions. The latter consisted of small more or less independent centres of cultivation of rhizomes, tubers and cuttings in gardens rather than in fields. In the forest areas of West Africa and to some extent in the savannah, the farming system which very much approximates the vegecultural complex of Porteres is the compound farm or homestead garden. This is perhaps the most intensive permanent system out of the principal seven to eleven farming systems prevalent in West Africa (Morgan and Pugh, 1969; Benneh, 1972). It would appear, however, that the utilization, protection and domestication of plants in the forest areas of tropical Africa, contrary to the ideas of Burkill, started with those perennial fruit trees and vegetables which could be eaten raw and experimented with for centuries prior to the discovery of fire and the subsequent utilization of roots, tubers and vegetables (Okigbo, 1974). Many of these plants abound in compound farms or in the wild state. They have undergone various phases of domestication involving harvesting from the wild, semi-wild exploitation, various aspects of protection and cultivation. These plants have been "neglected" probably because of the impact that introduced fruit and vegetable crops have made in the nutrition, agricultural and general economic development of the tropics. This paper highlights the place, nutritional importance and potentialities. | |
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