Ethnobotany and the structure of Home garden in Pujon Sub-distict Malang Regency, East Java Indonesia

Abstract

Background: Indonesia's rich biodiversity supports and cultural practices, especially in Java, where ethnic groups have unique ethnobotanical knowledge. The present study aimed to assess the ethnobotany knowledge of home garden in Pujon Sub-district.

Methods: The research involves a plant inventory and ethnobotanical data collection. Plants will be quantified and identified, and ethnobotanical information will be gathered through structured and semi-structured interviews with home garden owners. Scoring, using the Pebble Distribution Method, will occur in Focus Group Discussions. Statistical analysis will be performed with IBM SPSS Statistics 29.0.1.0.

Results: A total of 385 plant species were identified in the study. The Pebble Distribution Method (PDM) resulted in a home garden landscape value of 16. According to the Shannon-Wiener index, gardens that are closer to road access and those that are smaller in size exhibit higher plant diversity. The Kruskal-Wallis test found no significant differences in the Index of Cultural Significance (ICS) values among different home gardens (p = 0.763). Similarly, the Mann-Whitney test revealed no significant differences in ICS values between genders (p = 0.856). Additionally, the Spearman rank correlation test showed no significant correlation between ICS values and the Importance Value Index (IVI) (p = 0.147).

Conclusions: This research documents the local knowledge regarding the utilization and management of species within home gardens, that can be utilized to address future strategic issues such as mitigating global warming, conserving biodiversity, identifying new medicinal resources, and food security.

Keywords: Ethnobotany; Ethnobotany, Home garden Structure, Pujon Sub-district, East Java, Indonesia.