Exotic and indigenous fruits cultivated and managed in agroforestry systems are important in Sahelian countries.
The Report of the Task Force of Greening India for Livelihood Security and Sustainable Development Planning Commissionn 2001) has suggested that 10 million ha of irrigated land and 18 million ha of rain-fed land should be managed under agroforestry systems.
Here, we use data from twelve differently managed cocoa agroforestry systems in Indonesia to investigate the abundance, diversity and composition of spider communities at three spatial scales: (i) stratum, i.e. litter, herb and cocoa canopy layer, (ii) plot-level shade, litter and weed management and (iii) landscape context, i.e. distance to natural forest.
Villagers manage complex agroforestry systems of communal fruit gardens and rubber groves, often with communal forest, wet and dry swiddens, and occasionally irrigated wet rice.
Agroforestry systems are intensively managed to maintain their productive and protective functions through cultivation, fertilization, irrigation, pruning, and thinning.
Especially local agroforestry systems, such as managed semi-forest coffee production fragments (179.92 ± 38.5 Mg C ha−1), homegardens (106.26 ± 16.8 Mg C ha−1) and pole wood plantations (112.36 ± 23.9 Mg ha−1) store large amounts of carbon.
The study also yielded essential information for managing shade and nitrogen supply in both open sun and agroforestry systems and yielded basic information for developing coffee growth models,.
An important aspect associated with management of agaves is that cultivation is conducted mainly in agroforestry systems where sexual and asexual propagules and even plantlets transplanted from different wild and managed sources are maintained together.
Based on our findings, we suggest that coffee agroforestry systems should be designed with diversified, productive shade canopies and managed with a medium intensity of cropping practices, with the aim of ensuring the continued provision of multiple ecosystem services.
