Introduction

Providing a brief description of plantation forestry in the tropics is complicated due

the large diversity of site conditions, traditions, experiences and needs regarding

tree

planting. With the exception of a small number of countries of the Americas,

Africa

and, principally, Asia, where commercial plantations of a few species have

expanding very quickly, in most countries reforestation is at very low scale, mainly

at the social and agroforestry level. At the commercial level, plantation

establishment is supported mainly by private enterprises that are able to use

intensive techniques to assure a high productivity of the plantations. At the ‘social’

level there are still many important limitations, both political and technical, that

block the development of small scale forest plantations.

It is about tropical tree seeds - choosing, obtaining, handling and germinating

them. As with the previous manuals, it is based on the general biological principles

that apply to woody perennials throughout the humid and semi-arid tropics. Thus,

rather than listing instructions for individual species, it describes seed propagation

environments and methods for raising good seedlings of most kinds of trees,

provides advice on useful techniques and includes a check-list for trouble-shooting.

Planting tropical trees is frequently hampered by the difficulty of obtaining enough

good seed of the desired species. This manual addresses the many facets of this

problem in a practical way by starting from the processes of sexual reproduction in

trees, typically both delayed and intermittent, except in relatively few species. The

prospects for stimulating flower formation and for increasing the setting of fruits

are discussed, and the vital and difficult questions of genetic selection explained in

straightforward language. Collecting fruits and handling seeds are covered, with

emphasis on avoiding losses at each stage, and on distinguishing non-storing seeds

from those that are storable. Shading levels and germination media for successfully

raising young seedlings are given considerable attention, together with techniques

that can increase the proportion of them that survive. Other sheets deal with using

‘wildings’, crossing parent trees and doing seed experiments, and give sources of

further information.

Reforestation activities have been dominated by a small number of exotic

taxa, e.g. Pinus, Eucalyptus, Gmelina arborea and Tectona grandis. The

number of native species used in reforestation projects has been low,

although there is interest in the identification of native species with potential for

reforestation. In this field it is important to include work in genetic improvement,

and in-situ and ex–situ gene conservation. Additionally, more work is needed on

silvicultural techniques for ‘social’ plantations and on the processing and

marketing of the products, in order to increase the economic benefits and,

concomitantly, farmers’ motivation to plant more trees.

Reforestation in the Tropics

i. Negative effects of deforestation

The high biodiversity of the tropical region has been widely recognized.

Nevertheless, recent decades have seen a rapid decline in this richness, due mainly

to expansion of the agricultural frontier. It is estimated that about 30% of the

world’s terrestrial area is forest, of which 50% is found in the tropics and

subtropics. These subtropical and tropical forests are home to around 95% of the

world’s trees species. It is estimated that at least 97% of this forest cover is the

product of natural regeneration and only 3% is composed of plantations. In most

tropical developing countries, reforestation is not considered as a productive or

remunerative activity.

The negative impact of the loss of this forest cover is alarming and includes:

destruction and degradation of many species of plants and animals, degradation of

the soil, damage to water sources, desertification, and climatic changes are all

producing a strong negative impact in all sectors of society. Also, in rural areas

where natural forests have been eliminated, communities are experiencing

increasing difficulties in providing fuelwood and poles for agriculture, fences and

rural constructions.

ii. Direct benefits of reforestation

In tropical regions, small, medium and large forest plantations are established

mainly for the purpose of supplying community fuelwood and poles for rural

construction and industry. These are some of the more important direct benefits

that landowners can obtain from tree planting.

Large industrial plantations have been established mainly in tropical countries

where

there are economic incentives for reforestation by private enterprises interested in

the production of timber, plywood and paper, as in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and

some Asian and African countries. All of these represent some of the more

common direct benefits from forest plantations.

iii. Indirect benefits of reforestation

Reforestation has many important indirect benefits in rural and urban communities,

unfortunately, the main interest usually is concentrated in the direct rather than in

the indirect benefits. Among indirect benefits are: 1. The protection and

improvement of the soil conditions. This is a particularly important point in

tropical regions with high rainfall during the year and hilly lands where soil

erosion may reach more than 60 tonsha-1 yr-1. The reforestation of such degraded
sites is increasingly recognized as an important benefit of reforestation. Such

plantations need to be scientifically managed, in order both to protect the ground

cover and generate some economic resources for the local communities; 2. The use

of plantations both for grazing and as a source of fodder from tree foliage in areas

having long dry periods; 3. The use of forest species as shelterbelts in coffee and

cacao plantations and as windbreaks; 4. Planting trees improves water infiltration,

reducing the risks of floods and increasing the availability of water, a vital

consideration in many tropical countries; and, 5. Mixed species plantations,

including native species, is an important means of increasing habitat availability

for flora and fauna.

Urban reforestation also has high potential to improve microclimate and reduce the

impact of health risks such as smoke and noise transmission. The greenhouse effect

produced by the rapid increase in the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide

(CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (NO2), is likely to continue increasing.

The use of plantations to sequester CO2 is an important indirect benefit of

reforestation particularly when used as a short-term solution. In addition, such

plantations meliorate the local climate, lower temperatures and increase humidity.

Apart of these indirect benefits, farmers obtain direct benefits when they harvest

the trees.

iv. Reforestation is a priority in the tropics

In tropical countries, the conversion of the remaining areas of natural forest to

agriculture and pasturelands continues. Apart from the strong negative effects on

the

climate and biodiversity, it is becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy demands

for

wood products. For this reason, reforestation must be considered in most of the

tropical countries as a high priority for protection and restoration of soil and water

and for industrial and smallholder wood production.

In the 10th World Forestry Congress one of the recommendations was that “A

large

increase in the area of plantations is an absolute necessity to satisfy the growing

demand for wood products, to reduce the stress on natural forest ecosystems and to

sequester atmospheric carbon”. However, in spite of this recognition that

reforestation helps meet the basic needs of industry, improves rural incomes and

improves the critical situation of the environment, current activity is insufficient to

counter the negative consequences of deforestation. It is clear that the reforestation

must take a wide variety of forms, from large-scale plantations for wood industry

to small-scale diversified tree-planting activities of farmers. Another important

point is that implementation of reforestation strategies requires policy decisions at

several levels including national and international. These policy initiatives should
be directed at forestry institutions and be related to the real situation of the

communities and the countries, with the backing of national governments and

international organizations and the support of forest services, voluntary

organizations and local people. In most countries, promotion of reforestation faces

serious problems.

These include the lack of government interest and support, the perception of

reforestation as a non-productive activity, the lack of reproductive material of high

genetic quality, and the lack of the technical knowledge and experience necessary

for rational silviculture, processing and marketing.

Role of Trophic Seed in Plantation Development

The many important roles of tropical trees, actually range from the global to the

microscopic, and involve all of us, sometimes in unexpected ways. For instance,

the capacity of trees to lock away carbon in their trunks, roots and the soil means

that extra trees help to counterbalance global warming, whereas those net 300-odd

millions of trees lost each year simply add to the problems being caused by the rate

at which fossil fuels are being consumed. On a regional scale, there is even

evidence that extensive deforestation has altered the very climate the site

experiences. Or at the level of the close associations between soil micro-organisms

and trees, how can we expect, without them, to enjoy the free and efficient nutrient

recycling that underpins the sustainability of tropical land?

By shaking off some of the legacy of the past, perhaps the turn of the centuries will

be remembered as a key stage in real human development in the tropics, after the

disillusionment with projects that lacked local inspiration. Moreover, the last

decades of the old millennium have been dominated by views which placed short-

term profit above.

Forest plantations are a powerful tool in the continuing efforts of foresters to

increase productivity per unit area - the only means of reconciling the increasing

demands for forest products and services on the one hand with a decreasing area of

land available for forestry on the other. A combination of intensive site preparation

with the use of uniform, well-grown nursery stock, planted at uniform spacing,

increases growth and yield, reduces rotation length, facilitates tending and

harvesting operations and improves the quality and uniformity of wood, as

compared with natural forest. Plantations also offer the means of using on a large

scale the genetically improved material developed by tree breeders. Although there

is no case for the indiscriminate replacement of all natural forest by plantations,

their judicious use, by providing an alternative source of forest products, can itself

reduce pressure on the remaining natural forest and so help to conserve it as a

habitat and a source of genetic diversity.

Not only do plantations have a major role as producers of timber, pulpwood and

wood-based panels for forest industries, but fuel wood and pole plantations and

farm woodlots are locally important in many countries. Tree-planting is not

confined to block plantations. Shelterbelts and dispersed planting for soil

stabilization, habitat improvement, urban and rural amenity or as part of an

agrisilvicultural system all benefit the human environment. With such a variety in

planting purposes, it is not surprising that the scale of tree-planting and the variety

of species planted continue to grow in so many countries. The current greatly

increased interest in agroforestry opens up a whole new range of species for trial.

Ability to grow in symbiotic relationship with agricultural crops will be the

essential characteristic and will involve criteria such as rooting habit, ability to fix

nitrogen and multipurpose uses (food, wood, shelter). Low stature may be

beneficial and shrubs may become as important as trees. These new developments

will introduce new opportunities and new problems in seed collection and

handling.

There is a considerable body of published information on seed handling in the

temperate zones but published accounts of tropical experience with forest seeds are

scattered and incomplete. While recapitulating the principles of seed handling

derived from temperate experience, this guide seeks to illustrate these, as far as

possible, by examples taken from tropical species. At the same time it must be
emphasized that there is great variation in seed biology and that certain techniques

which are commonly practised with good results in the temperate zones, e.g.

stratification or prechilling, may have no useful function whatever in the tropics. It

is dangerous to extrapolate temperate experience to tropical species, experience in

the dry tropics to rain forest species, or experience in tropical agriculture to

tropical forest tree seeds, without testing it in each case.

Apart from a few well-known species such as Tectona grandis, research on tropical

forest seeds has been inadequate in comparison with both the severity of the

problems and the large number of species of potential value for plantations. Much

has still to be learned. A first step to this is a good understanding of the natural

reproductive biology of each species. For species of the dry tropics which survive

naturally by means of seedcoat dormancy, storage should present little problem

and a modest programme of research should indicate the most appropriate

pretreatment to overcome dormancy and induce uniform nursery germination. The

problem of preserving viability in recalcitrant seeds of tropical rain forest species,

especially those which will not survive temperatures below about 10° C, is a much

more intractable one. A variety of possibilities has been suggested (King and

Roberts 1979) but so far little progress has been made towards a practical method

of storage which would be applicable in large-scale afforestation projects. Much

more research is needed to solve this problem. Until a solution is found, the
dipterocarps and other recalcitrant species of the tropical rain forests will remain as

much non-starters for widespread plantation forestry as they have been in the past.

With a few exceptions, notably among the poplars and willows and in some

tropical species of Casuarina, trees are propagated from seed, and the suitability

and quality of the seeds have a big effect on the success of the plantations raised

from them. The use of sound seed from stands of high inherent quality is widely

recognized as the best means of ensuring fast-grown and healthy plantations

capable of yielding high quality wood (Aldhous 1972). Seed quality comprises

both genetic and physiological quality. It must be stressed that “good seed” implies

seed which is both of high viability and vigour and is genetically well suited to the

site and to the purpose for which it is planted. Physiologically good seed may lead

to successful establishment of a plantation but this is of little value if it is slow-

growing, ill adapted to the site or produces the wrong kind of wood because the

provenance or genotype was incorrectly chosen. On the other hand, there is little

point in producing genetically improved seed at an increased cost if it is killed by

poor handling techniques and has to be replaced or supplemented by inferior seed

in order to achieve planting targets. Good seed handling is an essential complement

to genetic improvement.
References

Evans, J. (1992). Plantation Forestry in the Tropics. Oxford University Press. New

York. 403.

McGaughey, S; Gregersen, H. (1983). El Desarrollo del Sector Forestal en

América Latina. BID. Washington, D.C. 235.

Wiersum, K.F. (1984). Proceedings on strategies and designs for afforestation,

reforestation and tree planting. Wageningen, Netherlands. 432.

Wormald, T.J. (1992). Mixed and pure forest plantations in the tropics and

subtropics. FAO Forestry Paper 103. Rome. 152.

Wood, P; Vanclay, J; Wan, W. (1993). Proceeding on the Tropical Silviculture

Workshop at the IUFRO

Centennial Conference in Berlin. Forest Research Institute. Malaysia, Kepong,

Kuala Lumpur. 148.