B. M. K UMAR
6.3 Participatory versus Conventional Improvement
agroforestry systems and native fruit crops in Amazonia. They participated in the peach palm expeditions of 1983–1984 and created a collection at Araracuara on the Caquetá River. They also did considerable work with inchi as a nut and oil crop, but it has not been adopted by Colombian fruit growers.
In the 1990s, the Bolivian government, with support from the USA and the European Community, started a programme called Alternative Tropical Development, designed to identify and develop economically attractive alternatives to illicit coca production (Erythroxylum coca Lam.). Among the native Amazonian fruit species, they worked with camu-camu, pineapple, peach palm (for heart-of-palm) and cocoa in both monoculture orchards and agroforestry systems (F. Alemán, Bolivia, 2006, personal communication).
Although they have had some success, their impact has been limited due to the high returns available from illicit coca production.
mandated implicitly or explicitly in international treaties, serving as a best practice alternative to biopiracy (Simons and Leakey, 2004). These benefits include, but are not restricted to, access to germplasm for own use or for sale.
Other potential benefits include opportunities for joint and mutual learning, capacity and skill-building, institutional development (formal and farmer institutions) and policy development (Christinck et al., 2005).
Participatory improvement also has some possible disadvantages with respect to the conventional approach. The logistical difficulties and, in some cases, the costs of maintaining participatory field experiments may be considerable. Although farmers may themselves meet part of the cost through their own labour, distances between experiments can be considerable, and the difficulty of regular monitoring can lead to problems in trial maintenance and protection. Second, close involvement of farmers in research planning and execution requires the effective deployment of skills and techniques that may be unfamiliar to many researchers. Thus, the approach is difficult to implement in situations where professionals with the necessary skills in participatory research are absent, both in the research community and in the extension services. Conventional improvement done well may be better than participatory research done poorly or in a ‘token’ way.
6.3.1 An example of participatory and conventional improvement: camu-camu Myrciaria dubia(H.B.K.) McVaugh, Myrtaceae, called camu-camu in Peru and caçari or river guava in Brazil, is a shrub that may attain 4 m in height and be generally abundantly branched from the base, forming an open vase-shaped crown (Pinedo et al., 2001). The fruit is a round berry with a smooth, somewhat shiny skin, dark red to almost black purple when ripe; the colour is due to a mixture of anthocyanins. Fruit weight varies from 3 to 20 g, with an average of 7 g; diameter varies from 2 to 4 cm. The fruit contains 1–4 flattened kidney- shaped seeds that are 8–11 mm wide. The average fruit has 51% white to nearly translucent, slightly fibrous, juicy pulp, although this percentage varies depending upon fruit size and number of seeds; the average fruit also has 20%
skin and 29% seeds (Pinedo et al., 2001); the use of mechanical separators leaves only 30% skin and seeds. Because the fruit skin is thin and coloured, this is generally processed with the pulp to obtain a pleasant reddish purple colour.
The chemical composition of the skin–pulp mixture has been reported (Calzada, 1980). Recent prospecting has identified fruit with enormous variation in ascorbic acid content: 0.8–6.1 g in 100 g skin–pulp (Yuyama et al., 2002).
Camu-camu has attracted considerable attention because of its high ascorbic acid content, especially as this is an important antioxidant (Rodrigues et al., 2006). Initially, numerous food products based on the fruit were developed, such as juices, nectars and yogurts, and frozen pulp is also commercialized. Currently numerous healthcare and personal hygiene products have also been made available, including skin creams, shampoos and mascara, as well as capsules and powders made from dehydrated skin (as this is richest in ascorbic acid and anthocyanins).
Natural populations of camu-camu occur most often along the edges of black-water rivers throughout the Amazon Basin and into the Orinoco Basin.
Sometimes it is found along white-water rivers, but in this case generally in oxbow lakes and abandoned channels where sediments are not so abundant.
In these riverside environments, plants are subject to inundation during the annual cycle of flooding, and will be partially or totally immersed for 4–6 months. In the upper reaches of the tributaries, flooding may occur several times during the rainy season and appears to have a favourable effect on ascorbic acid production. Fruit ripening occurs during the period of rising waters, and ripe fruit are generally harvested from canoes or left for the fish, many of which depend on camu-camu. Until the high ascorbic acid content was identified, camu-camu was seldom used as human food. Roraima, Brazil, is an exception, as the peasants along the rivers consider caçarí a popular juice.
Once the high ascorbic acid content was identified in Peru, a development programme was designed and put into practice, with ecological, agronomic, genetic and processing studies to add value (Pinedo, 2004). One of the first initiatives was to cultivate camu-camu on the ‘restingas’, the high beaches formed by deposition of sediments during flooding, because this was found to reduce the seasonality of the crop, making fruit available nearly year-round.
The first ‘restinga’ trials were established in 1980 near Iquitos, Peru, through collaboration between the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agrarias (INIA:
National Agrarian Research Institute) and the Instituto Veterinario de Investigación de Trópicos y de Altura (IVITA: Tropical and Mountain Veterinary Research Institute). In 1991, inviting ‘restinga’ farmers to participate actively in the agronomic and genetic trials enriched the research process. Initially, seven producers in the Santa Ana Community (Amazonas River) participated. This number expanded to 28 producers in six communities in 1994, and to 4000 producers in 150 communities in the Departments of Loreto and Ucayali in 1997, as a political decision by the Secretariats of Agriculture to encourage camu-camu production. These 4000 producers manage natural populations and have started planting orchards on ‘restingas’.
Peru started to export frozen pulp to Japan in 1995, with most of the production obtained from natural populations. From 1995 to 2000, exports expanded gradually, but were interrupted for 3 years (Pinedo and Jong, 2004).
In 2004, exports were reinitiated and in the 2005–2006 harvest season attained a FOB value of US$1.1 million, of which 93% went to Japan. At present, the following export products have low added value: frozen, clarified and concentrated pulp. The internal market is relatively small, although numerous products are now available, including yogurt, nectar and juices that mix camu-camu with other fruits.
The Peruvian improvement programme
The Peruvian development programme was created to transform camu-camu’s ascorbic acid potential into a lucrative market for small farmers given preliminary demand from developed countries. The first decision was to concentrate on Myrciaria dubiarather than Myrciaria floribundaO. Berg, as the
former has five times as much ascorbic acid as the latter. None the less, M.
floribunda may have a role in the future and has been included in germplasm collections.
The improvement programme planners decided to concentrate on an ideotype with four components (Pinedo et al., 2004): high ascorbic acid content (at least 2 g/100 g), high yield, precocity (at least 0.5 kg at 3 years from seed) and fruit size (at least 10 g). The Japanese importers demand at least 1.8 g/100 g of ascorbic acid, which can generally be obtained from wild populations, but collecting from the wild makes quality control more difficult.
Germplasm with the desired characteristics existed in the ex situcollections and had been evaluated, but vegetative propagation techniques were inadequate and had to be developed in order to get the programme started.
Initially, farmers’ perceptions and preferences were not considered, principally because most of them had no experience with the crop. Recently farmers have started to identify plants that do not grow too tall, have large fruits and good yields that are stable year-to-year, as well as plants that yield out of season. The research team from IIAP now does participatory plant evaluation with farmers in numerous communities along the Ucayali River, as well as a few others elsewhere.
A collaborative participatory improvement plan designed by IIAP and INIA started in 2000 to build on previous on-station and participatory work. The plan was designed principally to meet the criteria of the Japanese market, as local demand does not have stringent quality requirements. The participatory aspects include:
● The farmer identifies plants with elite characteristics (see above) and a research team collects samples (both seeds and cuttings).
● After propagation on-station, the research team returns some of the plants to the farmer and the remainder is incorporated into on-station clonal and progeny trials (there are no on-farm progeny or clonal trials).
● The farmer also propagates his best plants from seed to expand his orchard, and he is encouraged to trade seed and seedlings with other farmers as well.
● Seed from F2 INIA selections (taken from long-term progeny evaluation trials) are also distributed to interested farmers, who plant them in the same plot as their own selections where abundant cross-pollination will be expected.
● Farmers participate in the evaluation of all progenies on their farms, both their own and INIA’s selections.
Technologies are being transferred with the improved seed and cuttings.
Each time a research team visits farmers they discuss pest control practices and the use of legume ground covers, seeds of which were provided free of charge and with appropriate management instruction.
EXPECTED IMPACTS IN PERU At present, the supply of fruits is insufficient to meet the demand of the Japanese importers. During the 2005–2006 harvest, only 500 t of frozen pulp was exported, which was less than 10% of the stated demand
(Farronay, 2005). Hence, there is strong demand for the fruit coming from new plantations and from managed populations. However, it is not yet clear if demand will expand as supply expands, once all the plantations come into production.
The rapid expansion of the camu-camu project is already benefiting the farmers who joined the effort early, while those who joined later are expecting benefits in the near future. Most of the farmers who joined the project have included camu-camu as an additional component of their diversified traditional production systems. With current high prices, they are enjoying considerable additional income. Near Pucallpa, on the Ucayali River, a community commercialized 25 t of fruit from their plantations and adjacent wild populations, earning about US$11,500 in the 2005/2006 season.
Most families have also started using the fruit for subsistence, which is quite probably improving family health. Many families have started to process fruit for local consumption and markets; in general, home processing is done by the women and older girls, who also benefit directly from sales. The men and women will often take fruit and fruit products to market in alternate weeks, with the benefits managed by whoever goes to market. One group has used family contacts to market directly to Lima, the capital, and is receiving between US$1 and US$1.50 per kilogram of pulp, considerably more than if they sold locally.
Although there are health benefits, camu-camu contributes to food security more via income than as a food.
In terms of long-term conservation of genetic resources, the programme has enhanced local genetic diversity by introducing germplasm from other communities. Each farmer now has control over his germplasm and protects it from loss. Additionally, before the current improvement programme was designed and implemented, INIA had encouraged plantings with non-selected seed from numerous natural populations in different river basins (Ucayali, Tigre, Curaray, Yavari, Putumayo, etc.). This distribution enhanced local diversity in the project area and provided an ample genetic base for the farmers to start selecting from.
The Brazilian improvement programme
The INPA group introduced camu-camu in the late 1970s and distributed seed nationwide, but sufficient commercial interest in the fruit only appeared in the early 1990s. With this new demand, the INPA group expanded its prospecting efforts to capture variability throughout the basin, especially along tributaries rather than the main river (Yuyama, 2001). This is the effort that identified camu-camu with 6.1 g of ascorbic acid in 100 g of skin-pulp (Yuyama et al., 2002). The germplasm collected (150 accessions to date) is planted in replicated progeny trials or in collections, where phenotypic characterization and evaluation is executed (Gomes et al., 2004). As soon as plants fruit, their proximate and ascorbic acid compositions are analysed. The group has also worked on vegetative propagation techniques with some success (Pereira and Yuyama, 2002), but a commercially viable protocol remains to be perfected.
In 2003, a collaborative effort among INPA, Embrapa Genetic Resources and Biotechnology and the Federal University of Amazonas was funded to
develop an expressed sequence tag (EST) database that could be used to identify the genes involved in ascorbic acid synthesis, as well as other biotechnologically interesting compounds. Numerous ESTs associated with ascorbic acid synthesis and degradation were identified (Silva, 2006), although the full synthesis pathway is still incomplete. ESTs associated with anthocyanin synthesis, oxidative stress and transcription factors were also identified. The same study identified numerous EST microsatellites (SSRs) that are currently being used to examine genetic diversity in the INPA collections and progeny trials. A set of nuclear SSRs is also being developed, since these tend to be more variable than EST-SSRs. The INPA group expects to have a full analysis of genetic diversity throughout the Amazon Basin by 2008.
An ideotype similar to the Peruvian ideotype is used to identify elite plants in the progeny trials and collections. These are now being hybridized in a diallel design to examine the general and specific combining abilities for ascorbic acid production, fruit yield, precocity and plant architecture. Hybrids are also being offered to local farmers, but few are yet convinced that camu-camu will be economically viable in orchards on the non-flooding plateaus of Brazilian Amazonia.
EXPECTED IMPACTS IN BRAZIL Interest in camu-camu as a functional food continues to expand in Europe, Japan and the USA (Yuyama et al., 2002, 2003; Rodrigues et al., 2006). None the less, interest in cultivating camu-camu in central Amazonia has been minimal to date. An attempt to develop a participatory improvement programme near Manaus was not funded because of lack of demonstrable farmer interest. As the information on the nutritional qualities of camu-camu accumulate, however, increasing interest is being expressed in São Paulo State and camu-camu may be the next Amazonian fruit to migrate out of the region. Although some plantings already exist, at Iguape, São Paulo, for example, they are based on an extremely narrow genetic base and a new pest has already appeared to exploit this. Without expanding the genetic base via the Amazonian collections and improvement programmes, expansion outside of Amazonia may be slower than with other species that are more pest-resistant or have more ample genetic bases to start from.