摘要：Understanding biodiversity in homegardens embedded in landscapes dominated by commercial monoculture agriculture is critical for sustainable management of agrobiodiversityand meeting rural households’ needs in the face of global changes. We assessed agrobiodiversity in the 120 homegardens and its contribution to rural household livelihood strategieswithin a commercial monoculture sugarcane cultivation land matrix in eastern Uganda. Werecorded a total of 68 plant species from 46 genera representing 27 families. Species richnessspanned 6 to 19 species, and α-diversity (H’) ranged from 0.6 to 2.3; with 86.67% of thehomegardens having H’ >1. Species composition differed significantly (global RANOSIM = 0.153,p < 0.001) among the villages. The most important and commonly maintained plants werethose that provided food, fuelwood and money income and included Zea mays L., Manihotesculenta, Phaesolus spp., Coffea sp., Musa spp., Ipomea batatus and Artocarpus heterophyllus.Most of the crops cited as useful by households were also frequent and visible in many of thehomegardens. Although homegardens still hold some valuable plants, there is also loss ofimportant plants from the agricultural system including cowpeas, soya beans, bambaragroundnuts, finger millet, cotton, aerial yams and oysternut essential for sustaining household livelihoods. This loss, precipitated by increased land-use/cover change to commercialsugarcane plantations threatens agrobiodiversity conservation and the benefits householdsderive from homegardens. Our findings underline the importance of homegardens in theconservation of indigenous agrobiodiversity, and indicate that with the continued expansionof commercial sugarcane cultivation this opportunity may be lost.
关键词：ANalysis Of SIMilarity (ANOSIM);biodiversity;climate change;commercial agriculture;food security;homegardens;rural livelihoods;SIMilarity PERcentages (SIMPER)
