Underutilised Fruit Trees in Homegardens of Kerala: An Untapped Source of Food Security in India

Homegardens are the sites of conservation of a large diversity of plants both wild and domesticated. The term underutilised fruit trees is applied, in the general sense, to a group of fruit trees presently growing in a scattered and unattended way on roadsides, homestead land, waste land etc. inspite of their potential for intensive exploitation. Homestead farming system is prevalent in Kerala with wide variety of plants grown for food, feed, fodder and fuel. In order to find out underutilised fruit trees random studies conducted in seventy five homegardens from three districts of Kerala state, India. Thirty six species of underutilised fruit trees falling under sixteen families were reported. Among thirty six species reported from seventy five homegardens, fifteen were indigenous and the rest were exotics. Most of these underutilised fruit trees establish through natural regeneration of seeds and they grow slowly without supply of any nutrition, start bearing fruits after a long period and produce fruits of inferior quality. Hence these species have remained neglected without any commercial importance. With the ever increasing population pressure and fast depletion of natural resources, it has now become necessary that required attention should be paid to explore the possibilities of exploiting new plant resources in order to meet the growing needs of the human society, which incidentally has depended only on a small fraction of plant wealth comprising less than thirty crops. As alternate crops, these underutilised fruit trees help in diversification besides meeting multifarious human needs.