NON WOOD FOREST PRODUCTS FOOD FOR LIFE INDIGENOUS FRUIT TREES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA by Michel Laverdiere and Stanley Mateke April 2003 FAO SAFR HARARE ZIMBABWE Table of contents .\cknowledgements .... .................. .............................................. ... .. ............................. ... .... .. ... iii List of Acronyms ................................... .......... .... ... ...................... .... ....................... ............. .. iv Executive Summary ........................ .. .. ... ... .. .. ......... .. .. ... ..... ............... ...... ......... .......... .. ..... ........ v Background ... ............................................ .. ......... ..... .......... ......... ........ .. .................................. 1 Introduction ..................... ............................................................. .. .. ....................... .................. 1 1. SouthetTI Africa Vegetation .. .... ..... ... ................................ ... ........ ......... ......... .. ........ .......... 2 2. Forestry Inventories and surveys ............................................ .. ................................ ... ...... 4 2.1 Inventory of useful plants ......................................... ......... ... ..... ... ...... ..... ... ... ..... ... ... 4 2.2 Surveys in the Miombo Woodland ...... ........... ........................................... ... .. ....... ..7 2.3 Other inventories that may bring more information on IFTs ................................... 9 3. IFTs in semi-arid areas of Southern Africa .. .... ............................................ .... .... ......... .. 12 4. Research efforts in IFTs ........................................................ ........................................... 13 5. Production potential of selected IFTs in their natural habitat .......................................... 14 Conclusion: The Future of Indigenous Fruit Trees ............... ........................... ..... .................. 16 Bibliography ....................................... .. ............................................................ ..... ... ..... .. .. .... 18 Table 1 1FT priorities in Southern Africa .............................. ..................... .. .................... .. 8 Table 2 Measurement of some biometric variables in a classical forest management inventory in Goba Mozambique .................. ......... .... ............................... .... ..... .. ... 9 Table 3 Estimation of productivity of Fullerforest in selected fruit tree species ............ 11 Figure 1 Vegetation map of the Miombo .. .................... .. .... .. ........... ..... .. .... ... ...................... 3 Figure 2 CategOlies of use of 300 useful plants in Southern Africa .... ...................... .......... 5 Figure 3 Some IFT products on test market within SADC .. .. ......... ................................... 15 Box 1 Science, traditional knowledge and culture ................ .. ................................ ......... 6 Box 2 Production of oil from some IFTs .... .......... .. .. .. ................ .. ................ ... ........ .. .... 12 Annex I Areas covered by forests in twelve SADC member states Annex II Some key woodland types and their relative predominance in 12 SADC member states Annex III List of selected useful food indigenous fruit trees of southern Aftica occurring in six or more countries Annex IV Notes of interest on the fruit production of 10 most prefelTed IFTs in southern Aftica Annex V Common products made from IFTs in the southern Aflican region Annex VI FAO Training on IFTs at Matopos, 2001 Annex VII List and Inventory Data of Selected Indigenous Fruit Trees Extracted from Main Inventory of Fuller Forest, Zimbabwe Acknowledgements This paper was the result of close collaboration with Consultant Stanley Mateke from Bot$wana. Mr. Mateke produced a draft report leading to the present publication. The ~;upport of the following institutions is also much appreciated: Zimbabwe Forestry Commission, Safire Zimbabwe, Veld Products Botswana, the Directorate of Forestry and Wildlife in Mozambique, WWF Southern Africa, and ICRAF Southern Africa. iii List of Acronyms A-:3NAPP Agribusiness in Sustainable Natural African Plant Products CRIf\A SADC Centre for Research Information Action in Africa, Southern Africa Development and Consulting FAO Food and Agriculture Organization (of the United Nations) GTZ Gelman Technical Development Agency ICRAF World Forestry Centre IFTs Indigenous FlUit Trees MASHA V Israeli Co-operation Agency NGOs Non Governmental Organizations SADC Southern Africa Development Community SAFIRE Southern Alliance for Indigenous Resources (Zimbabwe) SAFR Southern and East Africa Region (FAO) SECOSUD . A Service for Environmental Conservation of Biodiversity and for Sustainable Development TCP Technical Co-operation Program VPR&D Veld Products Research and Development (Botswana) WSSD . World Summit on Sustainable Development iv Executive Summary Feeding the world is an important endeavour. This fact was recognised at the World Food Summit and the WSSD of 2002. Food Seculity is the primary goal of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The Forestry Division of FAO is no exception when it comes to making every effort to provide opportunities for access to food. Discussions and developmental plans on the use of Indigenous Fruit Trees (IFTs) have been at the forefront of initiatives in southern Africa, especially in the last decade. FAO's involvement has included seminars and the sponsoring of projects in the sub-region. This paper looks at the status and contribution of Indigenous Fruit Trees (IFTs) to Food Security in Southern Africa, and reviews and assesses the physical situation of IFTs in the Miombo Woodland. It contains infOlmation on use and trade of IFTs, and on biological developments in domestication and dissemination. It covers processing and marketing and explores avenues for the future of IFTs. Natural forests and woodlands of the Southern Aflica Development Community (SADC) cover 682 million hectares. The natural woody vegetation types of the region range from moist forests to semi-alid savannah woodlands, alid shrubs, thorn steppe and coastal forests. A few inventories and surveys have been done of IFTs, but generally on a qualitative basis, like the SADC SECOSUD Project, which presented the results of an inventory of 300 forest plants. Ethnobotanical surveys have also been done in Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These surveys explored the current uses of IFTs, and identified problems that farmers experienced in their domestication effOlts. This led to strategies to domesticate and market the most prefened species. Reports also indicate that the IFT populations are diminishing with time due to the encroachment of arable farming, and villages and towns. Vegetation mapping is available in all the countlies involved and covers dominant species as well as woodlands that include IFTs. The majolity of countlies in the Mombo have some fOlID of National Forest Inventory, and many intensive inventories of smaller areas for purpose of investment or management of the resource. These inventories usually record the number of stems of commercial species by dbh and height and sometimes regeneration. Some IFTs are also recorded dUling this process and correlation can be made between dbh and fruit production. The ICRAF Project of IFT domestication has come out with the 3 following pliority species: Uapaca kirkiana (Wild loquat), Parinari curatellifolia (Mobola plum), and Strychnos cocculoides (Wild orange). Other species in dlier areas are also important for domestication. They are Adansonia digitata, Sclerocarya birrea, Schinziophyton (ex-Ricinodendron) rautanenii, Vitex mombassae, Anisophyllea boehmii, Azanza garckeana, Vangueria infausta, and Strychnos spinosa. Sclerocarya birrea is not in the top three in the Miombo woodlands but is a very important IFT in the semi-arid areas of southern Africa where arable agriculture is very unreliable. v Studies on propagation within the Miombo area have shown that many of these IFfs are easy to propagate vegetatively and by seed. These techniques must be more widely disseminated. A wide variety of development institutions are undertaldng activities in market research, economics of production, fruit product development, and farmer empowerment in fruit processing. There is an increasing awareness of the importance of IFfs from the Miombo woodlands in terms of their contlibution to household nutrition and household income in southern Africa. An holistic approach to domestication and commercialisation of IFfs as tools for small business development is being tried in South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Products such as jams, dried fruit rolls and fruit nectar have been found to be of high market value, though the actual marketing in volume has proven difficult for most small producers to achieve. A search for information and documented expeliences concerning community-driven resource assessments from the southern Africa region and elsewhere yielded virtually no practical documentation on which the formulation of sustainable forest management plans for IFf extraction can be based. This is a critical gap in information that is required to detelmine management procedures that would allow sustainable harvesting of the IFf products. Therefore, it is timely that research and development institutions emphasise this aspect in their programs. Very few publications are