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SFB 564: C2.2 - Rehabilitation of barren hills: Improvement of communal grazing lands
Project
Project code: DFG SFB 564: C2.2
Contract period: 01.07.2003
- 30.06.2006
Purpose of research: Applied research
A considerable proportion of the mountainous areas of Northern Vietnam consists of unproductive, degraded lands, the so-called 'barren hills'. Research during the first phase of the SFB aimed at (1) identifying plant communities that are indicators for the different degradation levels and thus may be useful for rapid-diagnosis purposes, and (2) exploring the potential of perennial legumes for rehabilitating such degraded areas, as an alternative to afforestation as the conventional attempt to 're-green' barren hills. Regarding the rehabilitation potential of legumes, a 24-accession core collection of the multipurpose shrub Flemingia macrophylla, assembled on the basis of the accessions' origin information, is examined for its variability with respect to morphological, agronomic, forage plant and soil-reclamation characteristics. This work has only begun in 2002 and will continue, within the proposed 2nd-phase research, until 2005.
Research results of the first SFB phase (subprojects C2 and F1) suggest that a considerable portion of barren hills is used as communal grazing lands and that farmers are very interested in improvement measures to raise their productivity. Since to date there has been no research dealing with such native, communal pastures, C2.2 proposes to assess, in particularly close cooperation with A1.2 and F1.2, their role, productivity, forage value, and land use patterns leading to the development of grazing lands, by means of (1) PRA surveys and (2) primary-production and nutritive-value studies based on appropriate vegetation samplings (exclosures) on-farm during the rainy and dry seasons. Furthermore, C2.2 will test, under minimum-input conditions and by means of participatory research, a best-bet set of five 'improved' forage grasses and six 'improved' forage legumes regarding their adaptation to/production under prevailing soil and climate constraints, nutritive value, potential to persist under overgrazing conditions, and relative palatability to buffaloes and local cattle. Also this work will have close links with A1.2 and F1.2, in addition to D2.2.
The expected outcome of the proposed research will be the availability of knowledge about and understanding of (1) the variability in the Flemingia macrophylla core collection regarding its forage and soil reclamation potential; (2) the influence of land use on the development of communal grazing lands and their contribution to local livestock production systems; and (3) promising pasture grass and legume species adapted to prevailing edaphic, climatic and management conditions.
Section overview
Subjects
- Crop Production
- Agroecology
Collaborative Project
Funding programme
Excutive institution
Department of Agroecology in the Tropics and Subtropics (490f)
