Wild Edible Fruit Species Cultural Domain, Informant Species Competence and Preference in Three Districts of Amhara Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

The study was carried out in Adiarkay, Debark and Dejen districts in a context where wild fruit bearing species suffer notable disregard from research and development strategies, and consequently the basic information remains verbally with the local people without being adequately documented. Free-listing, individual interviews, focus group discussions, direct observation and pair-wise ranking were used to glean and evaluate data. Altogether, 46 species make up the wild fruits domain of the study area. Each site and district appeared to have its own cultural domain, and salient and favorite species. There is a high correspondence between highly preferred and salient species. Aggregating free-list data to solicit a cultural domain of the highest stratum (study area) was found to highly underestimate the domains of lower strata (districts and sites). There exists a wealth of knowledge about wild fruit species, especially on the part of the youth, shedding light on the perpetuation of indigenous knowledge. Future studies on wild fruits in the area needs to capitalize on species identified to have high consent and should make use of informants identified as having high species competency.