The Potential Climate Resilient Agroforestry Systems for Tropics: A review

Abstract

Climate change has emerged as a serious global issue, affecting food security, biodiversity, habitat loss, people's livelihoods, and poverty. The tropics are most affected by year-round high temperatures and limited per capita resources. Among the various tools for mitigating and adapting to climate change, agroforestry is a suitable option. Agroforestry is a sustainable land-use system with multiple outputs, in which woody plants are grown with herbaceous crops and/or animals on the same piece of land. Adoption of climate-resilient agroforestry practices can help provide climate-smart agriculture, ecosystem services, and other benefits in vulnerable ecosystems such as the tropics. In humid and sub-humid tropical regions, palm-based agroforestry systems, such as coconut-based, arecanut-based, and oil palm-based systems, are climate-resilient and provide good economic returns and ecosystem services. Similarly, fruit-based alley cropping systems such as mango, guava, apple, ber, aonla, and drumstick, as well as short-rotation wood-based alley cropping systems like Eucalyptus, Melia, Acacia, Ailanthus, and bamboo-based systems, are highly promising. In addition to these systems, multipurpose trees in farmlands and homegardens, integrated farming systems with woody plants, and rubber-based agroforestry systems are promising. In the semiarid and arid tropics, parkland or tiered systems, MPT-based alley cropping systems, silvipastoral systems, and windbreaks are potential agroforestry systems. In tropical highlands, coffee- and tea-based agroforestry systems, hedgerow intercropping systems, silvipastoral systems, and multipurpose trees and shrubs on farmland are suitable agroforestry systems.