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Ethnobotanical survey of wild edible plants used by Baka people in southeastern Cameroon

BACKGROUND: Forest inhabitants worldwide, and indigenous people especially, have depended for generations on plants and animals harvested in these ecosystems. A number of Baka hunter-gatherer populations in south-eastern Cameroon became sedentarised in the 1950s, but still rely on hunting and gather...

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Autores principales: Billong Fils, Pascal Eric, Afiong Nana, Natacha, Betti, Jean Lagarde, Farick Njimbam, Oumar, Tientcheu Womeni, Stéphanie, Ávila Martin, Eva, Ros Brull, Guillermo, Okale, Robert, Fa, Julia E., Funk, Stephan M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7579891/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33092623
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-020-00413-0
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author Billong Fils, Pascal Eric
Afiong Nana, Natacha
Betti, Jean Lagarde
Farick Njimbam, Oumar
Tientcheu Womeni, Stéphanie
Ávila Martin, Eva
Ros Brull, Guillermo
Okale, Robert
Fa, Julia E.
Funk, Stephan M.
author_facet Billong Fils, Pascal Eric
Afiong Nana, Natacha
Betti, Jean Lagarde
Farick Njimbam, Oumar
Tientcheu Womeni, Stéphanie
Ávila Martin, Eva
Ros Brull, Guillermo
Okale, Robert
Fa, Julia E.
Funk, Stephan M.
author_sort Billong Fils, Pascal Eric
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Forest inhabitants worldwide, and indigenous people especially, have depended for generations on plants and animals harvested in these ecosystems. A number of Baka hunter-gatherer populations in south-eastern Cameroon became sedentarised in the 1950s, but still rely on hunting and gathering to meet their basic needs. The use of wild edible plants (WEP) by these communities remains largely undocumented. In this study, we record the diversity of WEP used by Baka people in dense rainforests in the Mintom region. The area still contains relatively undisturbed forest expanses, just south of the Dja Biosphere Reserve, one of the most important protected areas in the Congo Basin. METHODS: We conducted two ethnobotanical surveys in 2019 in four villages on the Mintom road. In the first survey, we interviewed a total of 73 individuals to determine WEP usage. In our second survey, we specifically quantified WEP harvested and consumed daily in a number of households over a 2-week period during the major rainy season, when use of forest products is highest. Specimens of all recorded plants were collected and identified at the National Herbarium of Cameroon. RESULTS: We documented 88 plant species and 119 unique species/plant organ/recipes in 1519 different citations. A total of 61 genera and 43 families were noted. Excluding 14 unidentified wild yam species, 17 WEP species had not been reported in previous ethnobotanical surveys of the Baka. Our results showed that cultivated starchy plant foods make up a significant proportion of our study population’s daily nutritional intake. CONCLUSIONS: A high diversity of WEP is consumed by the studied Baka communities. The study area is likely to be significant in terms of WEP diversity since 18 out of the 30 “key” non-timber forest products, NTFP, in Cameroon were mentioned. Documentation of the use of WEP by indigenous communities is vital to ensure the continuity of traditional knowledge and future food security.
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spelling pubmed-75798912020-10-22 Ethnobotanical survey of wild edible plants used by Baka people in southeastern Cameroon Billong Fils, Pascal Eric Afiong Nana, Natacha Betti, Jean Lagarde Farick Njimbam, Oumar Tientcheu Womeni, Stéphanie Ávila Martin, Eva Ros Brull, Guillermo Okale, Robert Fa, Julia E. Funk, Stephan M. J Ethnobiol Ethnomed Research BACKGROUND: Forest inhabitants worldwide, and indigenous people especially, have depended for generations on plants and animals harvested in these ecosystems. A number of Baka hunter-gatherer populations in south-eastern Cameroon became sedentarised in the 1950s, but still rely on hunting and gathering to meet their basic needs. The use of wild edible plants (WEP) by these communities remains largely undocumented. In this study, we record the diversity of WEP used by Baka people in dense rainforests in the Mintom region. The area still contains relatively undisturbed forest expanses, just south of the Dja Biosphere Reserve, one of the most important protected areas in the Congo Basin. METHODS: We conducted two ethnobotanical surveys in 2019 in four villages on the Mintom road. In the first survey, we interviewed a total of 73 individuals to determine WEP usage. In our second survey, we specifically quantified WEP harvested and consumed daily in a number of households over a 2-week period during the major rainy season, when use of forest products is highest. Specimens of all recorded plants were collected and identified at the National Herbarium of Cameroon. RESULTS: We documented 88 plant species and 119 unique species/plant organ/recipes in 1519 different citations. A total of 61 genera and 43 families were noted. Excluding 14 unidentified wild yam species, 17 WEP species had not been reported in previous ethnobotanical surveys of the Baka. Our results showed that cultivated starchy plant foods make up a significant proportion of our study population’s daily nutritional intake. CONCLUSIONS: A high diversity of WEP is consumed by the studied Baka communities. The study area is likely to be significant in terms of WEP diversity since 18 out of the 30 “key” non-timber forest products, NTFP, in Cameroon were mentioned. Documentation of the use of WEP by indigenous communities is vital to ensure the continuity of traditional knowledge and future food security. BioMed Central 2020-10-22 /pmc/articles/PMC7579891/ /pubmed/33092623 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-020-00413-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Billong Fils, Pascal Eric
Afiong Nana, Natacha
Betti, Jean Lagarde
Farick Njimbam, Oumar
Tientcheu Womeni, Stéphanie
Ávila Martin, Eva
Ros Brull, Guillermo
Okale, Robert
Fa, Julia E.
Funk, Stephan M.
Ethnobotanical survey of wild edible plants used by Baka people in southeastern Cameroon
title Ethnobotanical survey of wild edible plants used by Baka people in southeastern Cameroon
title_full Ethnobotanical survey of wild edible plants used by Baka people in southeastern Cameroon
title_fullStr Ethnobotanical survey of wild edible plants used by Baka people in southeastern Cameroon
title_full_unstemmed Ethnobotanical survey of wild edible plants used by Baka people in southeastern Cameroon
title_short Ethnobotanical survey of wild edible plants used by Baka people in southeastern Cameroon
title_sort ethnobotanical survey of wild edible plants used by baka people in southeastern cameroon
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7579891/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33092623
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-020-00413-0
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