Floristic Diversity Assessment of Home Garden in Palayamkottai Region of Tirunelveli District, Tamil Nadu a Means of Sustainable Biodiversity Conservation

How to cite this paper: J. Vijayakumari | V. Sundara Prabha | E. Jebarubi | T. Leon Stephan Raj | S. Beschi Antony Rayan "Floristic Diversity Assessment of Home Garden in Palayamkottai Region of Tirunelveli District, Tamil Nadu a Means of Sustainable Biodiversity Conservation" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 24566470, Volume-3 | Issue-3, April 2019, pp.1484-1491, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.c om/papers/ijtsrd23 390.pdf


INTRODUCTION
Home gardens are traditional agro forestry systems characterized by the intricacy of their structure with lot of functions. Home gardens can be defined as 'land use system involving deliberate management of multipurpose biological varieties such as trees, herbs and shrubs in intimate association with annual and perennial agricultural crops and variable livestock within the compounds of individual houses 1 . Home garden is an integrated system which comprises different things in its small area (the family house, a kitchen garden, a mixed garden etc). It produces a variety of foods, medicine and agricultural products. These products could be used both for home consumption and for incoming purpose. There are numerous types of home gardens were serving for several functions. Vegetable gardens were the cultivation of different kinds of vegetables and fruits. Herbal gardens can be grown in a small a spot as a window box. Growing of culinary herbs and spices gives the freshest ingredients. Different herbs are usually separated through the planting design and cultivated in pot. Rose gardens mainly for the cultivation of flowers for income or beautification and fourth one knot gardens had squares of flora or paving encased by dwarf. The knot garden looks to control nature to into beautiful patterns. Oriental gardens are incorporates the use of water and paths, rocks and sculptured bushes and trees to create a peaceful and tranquil garden. Wild garden is a natural type of garden. Its natural style encourages the growth of natural plants and wild grasses. Home gardens are cultivation systems for both food and non-food production. Nevertheless, home gardens are mostly known for their food production function considered to be their basic function 2 . The different denominations associated to home gardens are home food gardens, urban food gardens, domestic food gardens and kitchen garden 3,4&5 are evidences of the paramount importance attributed to food production function of home gardens in the available literature. However, based on the spectrum of home gardens eco-friendly services 6,7,8,9&10 and the different uses reported to be combine to home gardens 11,12&13 , the non-food productions (medicinal, ornamental, etc.) are also of importance especially in some topographical framework. For instance in Benin, where the reported plant used for nonfood purposes compare to food ones 12 it should be expected that home gardens are functionally diverse. Because food and health care are basic human needs, we predict that food and medicinal function will predominate other functions. Home garden species typically have multiple uses, meeting family needs for food, medicine, shade, religious rituals and ornamental purposes 14 ,and these species can be cultivated, tolerated, enhanced, and protected 15 .Tolerance includes practices within human-made environments that are directly related to the conservation of useful plants that existed before the environments were transformed. Currently, the floristic composition of home gardens tends toward ornamental plants 16 .Not all plants receive the same attention. The choice of certain species is associated with their use in community celebrations or as foods consumed in everyday life and the use of certain species to treat diseases for generations 17 .A clear differentiation of the floristic composition between Mestizo and Maya home gardens 18 .In Latin America, the purpose of home gardens is related to the edible, medicinal and aesthetic uses of a particular species, which are the most common factors due to the high frequency of these uses 19 . In this study, the floristic composition of home gardens, the contribution of edible and medicinal species to household subsistence in Palayamkottai region of Tirunelveli District, Tamil Nadu, India.

MATERIALS AND METHODS Study Area
The present study was conducted in Palayamkottai (8.7166 º N and 77.7333 º E) region of Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, India. Temperature 28º C and humidity 78%. Palayamkottai was called as the Oxford of the southern Tamil Nadu. It is around 189.9 km 2 and the population about 4, 73,637. Mainly four areas were considered in this study such as KTC Nagar, Perumalpuram, Santhi Nagar and NGO Colony (Fig.1).

Fig1. Map of the study area.
Information collection and analysis Field information from these home gardens was collected from January to August, 2018. In the first interview, each interviewee was asked the following questions to obtain a list of the most frequently mentioned home garden plants. For this analysis 182 species were considered. The botanical material was identified with the support of college Herbarium for St. Xavier's college of Palayamkottai and experts of taxonomy. Households were identified as sampling units for the survey.
Draceaena reflexa Lam.   Taxonomically dicotyledons plants represent the more number of species contribute 150 species belonging to 53 families, whereas monocotyledonous plants contribute 29 species belonging to 15 families, gymnosperm presented with 2 families and 2 species and one pteridophyte species were documented in the study area.
Fabaceae (16 species and 13 Genera), Apocyanaceae (11 species and 10 Genera) and Solanaceae (9 species and 4 Genera) were the most dominant family in this home garden. Acanthaceae (7 speccies and 6 genera), Cucurbitaceae (7 species and 7 genera), Euphorbiaceae (7 species and 4 genera), Lamiaceae (5 species and 5 genera), Asteraceae (5 species and 5 genera), Oleaceae (5 species and 2 genera), Asparagaceae (5 species and 5 genera), Amaranthaceae (6 species and 5 genera), Rutaceae (5species and 3 genera), Malvaceae (5 species and 5 genera), Arecaceae (5 species and 5 genera), Caesalpinaceae (5 species and 4 genera), Rubiaceae (4 species and 4 genera), Araceae (3 species and 3 genera), Amaryillidaceae (4 species and 4 genera), Myrtaceae (3 species and 3 genera), Costaceae (3 species and 2 genera), Phyllanthaceae (  Most plant species of the study area are of considerable ecological and economic importance, useful as bio resources to wild fauna and human beings. Of the total 182 wild/naturalized plant species, most are useful as medicinal plants, and others are valuable as edible fruits, timbers, fuel wood, etc. Although food production is recognized as a basic function of home gardens 2 ,the motivation for home gardening is not always for mainly food production. With the recent studies on home gardens in Benin 20 , they revealed high prevalence of food and medicinal plants in gardens, confirming the importance of food production in gardening, and evidencing the key importance of medicinal plant in gardening systems in Benin. Home gardens with primarily for both food and medicinal purposes and with more functions (ornamental, protection/delimitation, and miscellaneous purposes) were found everywhere but most garden with high prevalence of ornamental plant species were also mostly found in these regions under the westernization influence. The ornamental quality of Tilzapotla's home gardens differed from that in other regions; these home gardens were mainly used for food security, to improve families' nutrition, and for economic growth in some cases 21 . Nevertheless, there are newly emerging positive trends in home gardening, which encourage people to maintain biodiversity in rural and urban gardens.
In developing countries the nutritional value of local, neglected horticultural species has been assessed and their cultivation in family gardens promoted to guarantee the intake of vitamins and micro-nutrients 22 . In high-income countries the growing demand for healthier life styles and closer connection with nature has driven a renewed interest towards sustainable agricultural systems and "traditional" food products, capable of connecting consumers to the natural and cultural heritage of a community or a geographical region. Many urban citizens of the developed world have taken up some form of self-production of food in their terraces, roofs, gardens or courtyards as well as in communal areas shared among neighbours 23 . For all the enumerated wild and naturalized plant species, information such as botanical name, vernacular name, family and habit are provided and plant species in the checklist and their photographs are showed in (Fig3).