A participatory tree-domestication program is working with communities to hunt down valuable trees in the forest which farmers can clone.

In 1999, Christophe Missé attended a training session held by the World Agroforestry Centre in Nkolfep, Cameroon, that he says changed his life. He learned techniques for developing superior varieties of indigenous fruit trees and now runs a nursery with his neighbors, selling over 7,000 trees per year. He has also planted hundreds of indigenous fruit trees on his farm.

"With the money I've made I've built a new house," he says. "I can now pay for two of my children to go to private school."

Missé is one of many thousands of smallholders who benefit from the participatory tree-domestication program managed by the World Agroforestry Centre. Locating superior varieties of fruit trees in the forest and introducing them on farmland is broadening biodiversity and generating income for poor farmers in Africa, Latin America and Asia. In the program, local farmers play key roles in selecting, propagating and planting new varieties, in addition to managing them on the farm. And it is the farmers who stand to benefit most from this approach.

"We ask local people which indigenous trees they value most and for what traits," explains Zac Tchoundjeu, co-leader of World Agroforestry Centre's Global Research Project on Tree Domestication and Agroforestry Germplasm. "Most commonly the response is ones with large, sweet fruit grown on trees that mature quickly."

In Cameroon, these species include bush mango (Irvingia gabonensis), African plum (Dacryodes edulis), African nut (Ricinodendron heudelotii) and bitter kola (Garcinia kola). In the Amazon, they include three palm species - aguaje (Mauritia flexuosa), majo or ungurahui (Jessenia batauba), and peach-palm (Bactris gasipaes) - and two other fruit trees, camu-camu (Myrciaria dubia) and cupuaçu (Theobroma copuazu). In China, they include pine nut and walnut.

In Africa, there are around 3,000 species of wild fruit, representing an enormously important - and largely untapped - natural resource.

A farmer in Peru shows the macabo fruit (Theobroma bicolor), which is native to Central and South America and is a relative of the cacao tree. It is eaten fresh and used in desserts or to flavor beverages. Photo: Marcos Tito/World Agroforestry Centre.

The high biodiversity of the Amazon includes hundreds of wild fruit trees. The Frutales Amazónicos Project of the multidisciplinary Amazon Initiative aims to unleash the potential of a selection of them to generate income, alleviate poverty and safeguard genetic diversity. "We are combining technological, socio-organizational and market innovations to tap into the biodiversity potential of Amazon fruit trees," said Julio Ugarte, a World Agroforestry Centre researcher in Peru. Once species have been chosen for domestication, local people help scientists identify individual trees in the wild that possess the desired traits. Vegetative material is then collected to establish superior germplasm accessions at research sites and nurseries. "Domestication takes advantage of the huge genetic variation that exists in the wild," says Tchoundjeu. "Different trees of the same species can bear fruits that are sweet or sour, large or small."

Scientists then research how best to propagate superior trees so that large numbers of clones can be made available as soon as possible. Conventionally, crop domestication entails breeding new varieties that capture the desirable traits of the wild species, but this can take considerable time with slow-maturing trees. To domesticate superior fruit trees needed now, researchers test vegetative propagation techniques such as rooting, grafting and marcotting. Farmers are trained on which techniques to use for which species, enabling them to propagate wild species for their own nurseries and farms.

"The success of the participatory tree domestication program lies in its use of simple, low-cost horticultural techniques that have an almost immediate impact on reducing poverty and improving human welfare," says Tchoundjeu, noting that the number of farmers' nurseries in Cameroon has grown from just four a decade ago to several thousand today. "People become less dependent on commodity markets, and they produce a crop they can both eat and sell."

"In China, mountain farmers earn 30% more from selling certified organic pine nuts and walnuts," adds Jianchu Xu, a senior scientist in the World Agroforestry Centre's China Program. "They practice chemical-free management that enhances both soil fauna and water quality."

The biodiversity benefits of growing more indigenous trees on farms are evident. Natural forests benefit, too, as farmers with improved incomes are much less likely to exploit them.

Participatory tree domestication in Cameroon is the subject of a new booklet in the Trees for Change series published in English (The Fruits of Success) and French (Les fruits du success) and available at www.worldagroforestry.org.