Homegarden plant diversity in relation to remoteness from urban centers: A case study from the Peruvian Amazon region

Abstract

Swidden cultivation is the traditional agricultural system in most parts of the Amazonian rainforest, and in many situations swiddens lead to the establishment of homegardens. In a remote area of the Manu National Park, Peru, such a system was investigated in two indigenous Matsiguenka communities for diversity of cultivated plants on swidden fields and in homegardens. The cultivated plants were identified from two to four plots per field in 46 fields in a total of 126 survey plots and 19 homegardens. Altogether 71 species were found in the homegardens and 25 in the swidden fields. Cassava (Manihot esculenta) was dominant in the cultivated fields, whereas fruit trees such as peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), guava (Psidium guajava), and Inga edulis; and cotton (Gossypium barbadense) and a medicinal plant (Cyperus sp.) predominated more than 75% of the homegardens. Species diversity increased steadily with age (length of cultivation) of the swidden fields. Diversity of species cultivated in the homegardens was low compared to other studies reported from the Amazon. This seemed to be due to remoteness from urban areas, relative isolation and consequently little interaction of the farmers with outside communities, and easy availability of plant products from nearby forests. Although these findings appear to contradict the premise that subsistence farming in such remote areas encourages farmers to produce a broad variety of species and, therefore, remoteness from urban centers increases species richness on farms; the extent to which the situation is impacted by easy availability of plant products from nearby forests, however, was not investigated in this study. In contrast to the homegardens, swidden fields in this study did not show any difference in species richness compared to other reported studies. 143