Agroforestry Practices in Arid and Semi - Arid Regions of India: Challenges and Opportunities

The review indicates the potential of Agroforestry Practices to meet out the requirements of food, fodder, fuelwood and other tree products as well as resource conservation in the arid and semi-arid regions of the country. However, it is recommended that there is an urgent need of integration of forestry with agriculture at the same place. Based upon various studies conducted on Agroforestry Practices such as planting methods, fertilization, spacing and pruning schedules for raising some of the promising forest and fruit trees in association with annual and perennial field crops have been developed and standardized for management of land degradation. Successful efforts have been made to stabilize the yields of selected crops under tree canopies through agronomic manipulations and by tree canopy management practices. Supplement income can be obtained without reducing productivity and quality of natural grasslands through the introduction of promising leguminous trees on dry degraded lands. These lands which were producing only 2-3 t/ ha/ year biomass earlier are now producing 8-10 t/ha/year high quality biomass. Soil-root interface studies in terms of sharing of space, water, nutrients and light has been workout. The lands which belong to Classes IV/V-VII can be brought under protective measures through plantation of forest trees are considered very important for Agroforestry System. Fodder trees leaves are valuable feed stuffs to animals during lean period. These can be obtained from the top feed species by lopping management. Besides, these are good source of protein and supply of high energy diet during dry season of the year. Moreover, pods and fruits from planted tree species in Agroforestry System are highly palatable and can substitute in the concentrate feed. Some trees pods can also be used as a human and cattle feed. In general, pods are more nutritious than leaf. Under Agroforestry Systems agricultural crops can be grown successfully when the tree are lopped. The negative effects of Agroforestry trees can be narrowed down by lopping management. The plantation of trees as field boundary serves as shelterbelts and windbreaks to protect the field crops from biotic and abiotic stresses. Short rotation tree species are planted in high density and managed by regular pruning, thinning, felling, copping farming to ensure high productivity and conservation on degraded lands. The degraded lands could be rehabilitated by the use of silvi-pastoral system for continuous supply of fodder, fuelwood and other associated products. The yield of cultivated crops had decreased under trees because of competitions for natural resources like soil, water, light and nutrients. But reduction of fuel, fodder and soil nutrients can compensate this loss. Under horti-pastoral system, fruit trees can be planted very well and seeds of perennial legumes and grasses can be grown in between the rows of fruit trees. Hedgerows intercropping between bushes/ trees and agricultural crops primarily as an alternate land use system for enhancing productivity of whole system. Besides, it also fulfills the demand of fodder, firewood, and control of soil erosion. Alternate strip cropping of grasses and perennial legumes on sloppy degraded lands yielded high dry matter production when vegetative barriers were also used. Thus, in nutshell holistic approaches of Agroforestry Systems in dry fringe in India can be served as a multi purposes. This paper focused especially on the Agroforestry Practices recently conducted in dry parts of the country.