Record Details

Ethnobotany and agrobiodiversity: valuation of plants in the homegardens of Southwestern Uganda

CGSpace

View Archive Info
 
 
Field Value
 
Title Ethnobotany and agrobiodiversity: valuation of plants in the homegardens of Southwestern Uganda
 
Creator Whitney, C.W.
Bahati, J.
Gebauer, J.
 
Subject agroforestry
conservation
quantitative ethnobotany
traditional knowledge
anthropology
 
Description Homegardens are species-rich agroforestry systems with a high diversity of associated traditional knowledge. These systems are an important part of food security for rural marginalized poor around the world, particularly in the humid tropics. Despite the high diversity and cultural importance, little is known about the livelihood-relevant plant diversity contained in the homegardens of southwestern Uganda. Here we employ the quantitative ethnobotany indices use reports (UR) and the cultural importance index (CI) to describe the importance of plants and plant types in the region’s homegardens. Data is based on inventories of 102 homegardens in the Greater Bushenyi from 2014 and reveals 225 useful plant species in 14 different use categories with 3,961 UR, 54% for food, 15% for economic uses, and 11% for medicine. The findings highlight the importance of homegarden plants for subsistence farming households and indicate that they are important places for conservation of botanical agrobiodiversity that should be considered part of the conservation movement in Uganda. Efforts to conserve both botanical and food system diversity in the extremely rich but rapidly deteriorating regional socio-cultural and ecological systems should consider homegardens for their role in conservation of plants and preservation of traditional knowledge.
 
Date 2018
2019-07-22T10:46:06Z
2019-07-22T10:46:06Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Whitney, C. W.; Bahati, J.; Gebauer, J. 2018. Ethnobotany and Agrobiodiversity; Valuation of Plants in the Homegardens of Southwestern Uganda. Ethnobiology Letters, 9(2):90-100.
2159-8126
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/102244
https://ojs.ethnobiology.org/index.php/ebl/article/view/503
https://doi.org/10.14237/ebl.9.2.2018.503
Restoring Degraded Landscapes
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-NC-4.0
Open Access
 
Format 90-100
 
Publisher Society of Ethnobiology
 
Source Ethnobiology Letters