In Ethiopia, agrobiodiversity is managed through indigenous knowledge of rural communities, where the selection of plant species varies depending on the sociocultural practices and local economic needs. Traditional beekeeping has been practiced by millions of households in rural Ethiopia over a long historical period. However, the contribution of beekeeping in maintaining agrobiodiversity has not been systematically assessed in the country. This study was conducted in Central and Western Ethiopia to assess and compare traditional conservation practices, as well as the diversity and abundance of vegetation found within home-garden maintained by beekeepers and non-beekeepers. The results of the study showed that beekeepers raditionally retain more remnants of trees and shrubs in their home-garden to favor sustainable beekeeping, compared to non-beekeepers who instead are more likely to expand crop production. The mean number of floral species in beekeeper and non-beekeeper home-gardens was 22.8 ±3.2 and 14.2 ± 2.1, respectively. The higher species richness of bee visited plants in beekeepers’ home-gardens may be associated with traditional ecological knowledge accumulated by beekeepers over the years to maximize harvests of bee products. We therefore recommend the integration of ekeeping to other conservation interventions, such as community forestry, watersheds and protected areas as sustainable conservation practices. We suggest that necessary financial, technological, and extensional support should be enhanced to align improved v to any conservation efforts.
Croton macrostachyus Hochst.ex Delile is a species of the genus Croton, Euphorbiaceae family, commonly known as the spurge family and it is known as major honeybee forages having more nectar and the study was carried out to evaluate effects of its layers, and age and temperature on its nectar volume and concentration. Nectar is a floral resource commonly sought after by plant visitors, because of its nutritional importance. Effects of temperature, layers of trees and plants age on nectar volume and concentration of youngest, medium and oldest age of croton was measured. Results indicated that nectar concentrations and volume of youngest age were no more affected by temperature like that of medium and oldest age. Temperature and age has significant effect on volume (p = 0.0001) and their interactions is also significant (p = 0.012).Temperature has significant effects on nectar concentration (p = 0.000). Oldest plants had highest concentration of 10.1 w/w morning and afternoon 36.5 w/w at 4:00 PM for whereas medium plants had nectar concentration of 5.7 w/w morning and afternoon 16.7 w/w and the smallest had nectar concentration of 2.7 w/w morning and afternoon 9.1 w/w. I conclude that future temperature rise could have negative effect on nectar secreation for honey productions since for croton also no nectar secreation was observed after peak temperature of its nectar secreation that was 30°C. Studying factors affecting nectar volume and concentrations is important to increase productions and the productivity of honey to generate income and for medicinal value of honey.
Background: Ethiopia is one of the plant species-rich countries in the world and the center of origin of many medicinal plants. Studying antimicrobial activities is vital to investigate plants resources for medicinal values and the study was conducted to identify and evaluate Croton macrostachyus honey’s antimicrobial sources from its nectar and pollen against mentioned bacteria. Methods: Completely Randomised Design was used for the laboratory. After adjusting turbidity, consistent growth of bacterial culture was made using sterilized cotton. The extract of C. macrostachyus’ pollen 3.6 gm. was added to 12 ml of distilled water to prepare stock solutions as 3.6:12 = 0.3 x B = 3 x a ppm stock solution and antimicrobial activities of pollen, nectar, and honey were tested against mentioned bacteria above. Data were inserted into Microsoft excel 2010 and imported to R software version 3.44. Multilevel analysis was used to see the interaction between bacteria species and each concentration of honey, nectar, and pollen of Croton and Anova was used to see the significance of these concentrations on bacteria species. A p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: Results indicated that bacteria were more inhibited at 72 hours than 48 and 24 hours and the result identified honey’s antimicrobial source was due to pollen composition found in honey that only pollen had antimicrobial activities while nectar had no antimicrobial activities against both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria mentioned above. Time has significant effects on tested bacteria (p = 0.000) and treatments have significant effects on tested organisms (p = 0.000). Honey inhibited the growth of more Gram-negative bacteria: Escherichia coli and Shigella boydii. Bacillus was mostly inhibited by crotons’ pollen than others.Conclusions: Water extract of Crotons ‘pollen had antibacterial activities against all tested bacterial strains, but inhibited more Gram-positive bacteria; while Crotons’honey inhibited more Gram-negative bacteria than Gram-positive bacteria. Negative controls (sterilized water) and nectar did not show an inhibitory effect on tested bacteria, while positive control (Chloramphenicol) had antimicrobial activities. Further isolation and characterization of bioactive compounds from Croton macrostachyus pollen are useful to develop a novel botanical formulation for further applications.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.