Acacia senegal and the gum arabic trade: monograph and annotated bibliography

Working paper

Increasing population pressures coupled with periodic droughts have brought about deforestation and land degradation in the dry zones of Africa. Without trees, soil fertility declines, and annual grasses and less palatable herbs and shrubs replace the more nutritious perennial species reducing the land productivity. Many exotic tree species have been introduced into sub-Saharan Africa; however they have not proved very successful in the semi-arid areas, where the ravages of droughts, termites and browsing animals drastically reduced their survival. It has now been generally accepted that a solution to combat this decreasing land productivity is to manage and cultivate the indigenous species, particularly the pioneer legumes that are the natural re-colonizers of these disturbed and degraded lands. Prominent among these are the acacias, and for this reason a series of projects was started in 1987 at the Oxford Forestry Institute, funded by the Overseas Development Administration (now Department for International Development) of the Government of the United Kingdom, to explore, assemble and evaluate the genetic resources of the most widespread and economically important African acacias, including Acacia senegal.

Authors: Fagg, C; Allison, G

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: Oxford Forestry Institute, University of Oxford
• Series: Tropical forestry papers
• Publication date: 2004-01-01
• ISSN: 0141-9668
• Paper number: 42
• ISBN: 0850741572
• Language: English
• Keywords: OFI; Oxford Forestry Institute
• Subjects: Forests and forestry; Plant sciences