IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2020) 11-1

Research article
erdRichness of Horticultural Crops with Emphasis on Mango
Species in Selected Home Gardens in Myanmar
NYEIN NYEIN AYE*
Yezin Agricultural University, Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar
Email: nyeinnyeinyau52@gmail.com

THANDA AUNG
Yezin Agricultural University, Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar

KHIN THIDA MYINT
Yezin Agricultural University, Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar
Received 28 January 2020

Accepted 10 April 2020(*Corresponding Author)

Abstract This study aims to explore the relationship between home gardens’ sizes andspecies richness of horticultural crops and to study the distribution of mango varieties in theselected area. Sixty home gardens were studied from September, 2018 to October, 2019 in
Nay Pyi Taw Union Territory, Myanmar. Drone was used to generate geographicalinformation. Coordinate points of each mango variety was collected. Information oncompound dimensions and crop plants namely local names, growth stages, numbers ofindividual, leaf attitudes and characters were collected. Shannon-Wiener’ index wasemployed to determine species richness. Distribution maps of mango varieties weredeveloped. The compound areas could be classified into three classes as small, medium andlarge; were not correlated with species richness of all horticultural crops, but there hadsignificant correlation with richness of mango varieties (p = 0.01, r = 0.32). Potential areafor home garden development was highest in large gardens (41%) followed by medium (16%)
and small (9%). Out of total 480 species, richness was highest in ornamentals (46%) followedby vegetables (10%), fruits (8%), shade-trees (8%), medicinal-plants (6%), spices (3%) andunidentified species (20%). Among fruit trees, mango was the most dominant species and90% of home gardens were growing a total 361 plants (young 37% and adult 63%) of 15 local
varieties namely Ma Chit Su (39%), Sein Ta Lone (24%), Sein Sar Thee (20%), Yin Kwe(9%), Ma Naw Nwe (3%), Waso, Padamyar Nga Mauk, Mya Kyauk and 4 unknown varieties(1% each) and Wet Ta Kaut, Pan Swae and Pyo Ta Ngone (0.3% respectively). Three typesof leaf attitude and 8 different leaf characters of mango varieties were identified. Diversityindex of total species was 1.57 and 1.40 for mango varieties. It was concluded that species
distribution was sufficient; however, there is remaining available space to extend homegardening in the study area.
Keywords drone, species diversity, potential area

INTRODUCTION
Home gardens (HG) are sites of plant species diversity and also serve to conserve different species
and varieties. Richness of horticultural crops species can be attained not only for self-sufficiency infood production but also nutritional status by diversification to those crops. Saving and exchanging
seeds/planting materials from home gardens with neighbours are able to conserve a considerable
amount of crop species. Being labour-intensive, horticultural crops provide job opportunities, besides
having great export potential and therefore create more income for rural people. In order to promote
the growth of horticulture sector, there are necessities to document the existing horticultural crops,
to calculate the richness of those crops species and also to assess potential area for further expansion.
To know the richness of horticultural crops species and the potential areas for home gardensdevelopment, the existing kinds of crops species and sizes of home gardens are needed to investigate.
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The potential area for home garden development is the basic unit of species conservation in rural
sustainable development. Therefore also the exploration of relationship between the home gardens
areas and species richness has becoming importance for developing of the home gardens. Scientificinvestigations on richness of species and sizes of home gardens are severely lacking in the country.
In a statement of Helen Keller International/Asia-Pacific program, 2010, “the vegetables andfruits in the home gardens contribute considerably to increased consumption of these types of foods
in many Asian countries”. Among fruit trees, mango is one of the most important commercial crops
in Myanmar and peoples’ choicest fruit due to its agronomic and cultural value. Myanmar mangoes
are assumed to be traditional varieties as they has historical origins, distinct identity, are geneticallydiverse, locally adapted and associated with traditional farming systems (Hirano et al., 2011). The
total planted area of mango in Myanmar was 93,890 hectares and was 30% of total cultivated areafor fruits (MFFVPEA, 2013). There are about 300 different mango varieties and 20 kinds of mango
species in Myanmar. Leaf morphology of the mango species is highly variable depending on thecultivar. There is broad genetic diversity of mangoes in Myanmar that needs to be identified (Hiranoet al., 2010). Research based on genetic resources of mango is very scarce in Myanmar. Moreover,there have been no reports of detailed information on spatial varietal distribution and identificationon land-usage. By analysing the spatial distribution, the current land use of this area can be identified
and has great potential in efficient utilization of land (Sana Iftikhar and Hafiz Zahid Mahmood, 2017).
The determination of spatial distribution will help in determining the ecological suitability of an areafor fruit growing. Geospatial technology such as Global Positioning System (GPS) and GeographicalIndicating System (GIS) is one of the most widely used tool to provide updated information in
identifying suitable sites for various crops and mapping for fruit trees distribution (Singh et al., 2017).
OBJECTIVE
The aims of this study were to explore the relationship between the size of home gardens’ and species
richness of horticultural crops and to study the distribution of mango varieties in the selected area.
METHODOLOGY
The study was conducted in 60 selected home gardens out of total 370 in Kyee-Inn village, Nay Pyi
Taw Union Territory, Myanmar from September, 2018 to October, 2019. Drone (DJI Phantom
4PRO) was flown above 50m to generate geographical information. The location of each selected
home garden and mango varieties were recorded by Global Positioning System (GPS) GARMAN,
GPSMAP 62 device. Drone photos were merged and arranged with Pix 4D software to determine thebase map of the study area. ArcCatalog and ArcMap softwares (10.3.1 version) of ArcGIS were used
to map the distribution of selected home gardens and mango varieties.
The composition of each home garden such as compound and building areas were measured;
residential (social) and crops covered areas were visually estimated by drone images and the potential
areas for home garden development were calculated. Primary data were gathered by both directobservations to acquire information on all horticultural crops especially mangoes: including local
names, growth stages and number of individuals, and by interviewing people with semi-structured
questionnaire sets. Descriptive statistics of the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS),
version 23 was used to examine the relationship between the home gardens areas and species richness.
The Shannon-Wiener’ index was employed to determine the species richness by use of the following
equation.
𝑠𝐻′ = − ∑ 𝑝𝑖 𝑙𝑛 𝑝𝑖
𝑖=1

where H′equals diversity index, s equals the number of species and pi equals the ratio of individuals ofspecies i divided by all individuals N of all species.
For growth stages of mangoes, less than 5 year-old trees were regarded as young and those above 5years were regarded as adults. Finally, three representative leaf samples of each mango variety wereⒸ ISERD

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IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2020) 11-1

collected and leaf attitudes and leaf characters such as shapes of blades, apexes, bases and margins, wereevaluated using mango descriptors (International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, IPGRI, 2006). Leaf
lengths and widths were measured manually.

Fig. 1 Distribution of selected 60 home gardens (small, medium, large) in the study area
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Figure 2 shows three groups of home gardens (n=20) categorized from small (1400-4000 ft2),
medium (4001-6400 ft2) to large (6401-21,500 ft2). Potential area for home garden development was
highest in large home gardens group (41%) followed by medium (16%) and small (9%).

Fig. 2 Different areas that comprised home gardens in the 3 categories (n= 20)
The observed horticultural species were categorized into 7 groups. Of the 480 species that wereobserved, species richness was highest in ornamentals (46%) followed by vegetables (10%), fruits(8%), medicinal plants (8%), shade trees (6%), spices (3%) and unidentified species (20%) (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Classification of horticultural crops identified in selected home gardensⒸ ISERD89

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Among fruit trees, mango species were the most dominant and 90% of home gardens weregrowing a total of 361 trees which included 15 local varieties: namely, Ma Chit Su (39%), Sein TaLone (24%), Sein Sar Thee (20%), Yin Kwe (9%), Ma Naw Nwe (3%), Waso, Padamyar Nga Mauk,Mya Kyauk and four unknown varieties (1% each) and Wet Ta Kaut, Pan Swae and Pyo Ta Ngone(0.3% respectively). These respective proportions in each group of home gardens are presented inFig. 4 (a). A base map of the village was produced and then the distributions of the 15 mango varieties
are shown in Fig. 5. Mango varieties were well distributed over the whole study area. Out of a total
361 mango trees, mostly propagated by seeds, 37% were at the young stage and the remaining 63%
were adult (Fig. 4 (b)). Almost in all varieties, the juvenile period usually ended after 4th years andflowering started in the 5th year. This finding is consistent with the report by Mukherjee and Litz,(2009) who stated that the juvenile period of seedling trees usually ranged from 3 to 7 years.

(b)

(a)

Fig. 4 Fifteen mango varieties in 3 groups of home gardens (a) and growth stages (b)Fig. 5 Distribution map of 15 mango varieties
The evaluated leaf characters of 11 known and 4 unknown varieties are shown in Table 1. Threetypes of leaf attitudes and leaf characters (blade, apex, base) were observed. Both wavy and entire
margins were found in all varieties. Lengths and widths of leaves ranged from 16.5-25.0 cm and 3.04.4 cm, respectively. Figure 6 shows the comparison of different leaf characters of the observed
mango varieties.

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Table 1 Leaf descriptors of 11 mango varieties and 4 unknown varieties
No. Variety

Attitude

Length Width(cm) (cm)BladeApex

Base

Marginoblongacute

obtuse

wavy

19.5

4.0

oblongacute

obtuseentire18.0

4.1

2 Unknown 2

semidropping
horizontal

3 Unknown 3

horizontal

lanceolate

acuminate acute

wavy

21.0

3.0

4 Unknown 4
5 Yin Kwehorizontal
semi-erectlanceolate
elliptic

acuminate acute
acute
acute

wavy
wavy

24.0
19.3

3.2
3.8

6 Ma Chit Su

semidropping

lanceolate

acuminate acuteentire20.5

4.0

7 Ma Naw Nwehorizontal

1 Unknown 1

oblongacuteobtuse

wavy

16.5

4.4

semidropping
9 Pa Damyar Nga horizontal
Mouk
10 Pyo Ta Ngone horizontal
horizontal
11 Mya Kyauk

lanceolate

acuminate obtuse

wavy

18.3

3.6

lanceolate

acuminate obtuse

wavy

21.0

3.8

lanceolate
oblongacuminate acuteentire
obtuseacuminate entire

25.0
20.8

3.4
4.0

12 Sein Ta Lonesemi-erect

oblongacuteobtuse

wavy

21.5

4.0

13 Wat ThaKout

horizontal

lanceolate

acuminate acuteentire19.5

3.6

14 Sein Sar Thee
15 Wasohorizontal
horizontal

lanceolateoblong

acuminate acutewavy
obtuseacuminate entire

23.0
20.8

3.2
4.0

8 Pan Swe(o)5 cmFig. 6 Leaf characters of (a-d) 4 unknown varieties, (e) Yin Kwe, (f) Ma Chit Su, (g) Ma Naw
Nwe, (h) Pan Swe, (i) Pa Damyar Nga Mouk, (j) Pyo Ta Ngone, (k) Mya Kyauk, (l) Sein
Ta Lone, (m) Wat Tha Kout, (n) Sein Sar Thee and (o) Waso(a)(b)(c)(d)(e) (f)(g)(h)(i)(j)(k)(l)(m) (n)Fig. 7 Relationship between area of home gardens and number of species for all horticultural
crops (a) and number of mango trees (b)Though the sizes of home gardens had no correlation with species richness of all horticultural
crops (p = 1.24, r = 0.20), there had a significant correlation with mango varieties (p = 0.01, r = 0.32).
Fig. 7 shows correlation coefficient for species richness of all horticultural crops (r2 = 0.04) andmango trees (r2 = 0.08) which mean only 4% of the variance in species richness and 8% of mango
trees is explained by the change in home garden areas. Furthermore, the slope is 0.001 in both cases,Ⓒ ISERD91

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indicating that for every unit increase in areas, number of species increases by only 0.001. The
calculated diversity indices were H’ = 1.57 for all species and 1.40 for mango varieties. Typicalvalues of diversity index are generally ranged between 1.5 and 3.5 (Magurran, A.E. 2004) and thecalculated indexes of the study area were reached nearly this range.
CONCLUSION
Although the results suggest that indeed, plant species richness of home gardens in the study area ishigh, there were more potential areas to extend home gardening especially for large home gardens(41%) followed by medium gardens (16%) and small ones (9%), respectively. While we found nocorrelation between species richness and the home gardens sizes, these sizes were signiﬁcantly
correlated to richness of mango varieties with a higher species richness in larger than in smaller-sizedhome gardens. This might be because large-sized gardens tend to focus on fruit tree type species andallocate more of their land to food crops, while small gardens can afford to include different types ofcrop species. Mango varieties were well distributed and adaptable with agro-ecology of the study
area; therefore, the gardeners should try to replace with the marketable and exportable quality mango
varieties in spite of existing local varieties. Home gardeners need to be made localized efforts toconserve rare native species by promoting more widespread cultivation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to acknowledge our appreciation to Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)
for their financial and technical support for this study. Similarly, we would like to express our sincere
thanks to authorized persons from Yezin Agricultural University for kind permission andencouragement to conduct this study. Finally, but not the last our great and sincere thanks goes tohome gardeners for their contribution and integrity.
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