View article

Agricultural biodiversity is shrinking very fast. That said, there are still a few farmers who continue to maintain, innovate and disseminate fruit tree diversity in their home gardens and orchards. The study was conducted in 36 communities of India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand to find out why some farmers do maintain rich fruit tree diversity whereas many do not. The study also aims to answer the following research questions: What conservation practices do farmers do and what are the motivations for their efforts? What are characteristics of such farmers and what are key challenges? Participatory four cell method was carried out amongst the potential custodian farmers, followed by key informant survey and field validation. We found that quite a few farmers maintain rich diversity with few rare and unique fruit tree species or varieties and are mainly driven by conservation ideology. The characteristics of such …