Multipurpose benefits and scaling-up strategies for Bauhinia thonningii Schumacher: a review

Autor: Zenebe Girmay, Tesfaye Gebre, Mitiku Haile, Emiru Birhane, Sarah Tewolde-Berhan
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Agroforestry Systems. 96:265-280
ISSN: 1572-9680
0167-4366
Popis: Bauhinia thonningii is a woody leguminous tree species, which is endowed with enormous soil improvement, medicinal, nutritional, and socio-ecological benefits in African. The current study was carried out to systematically review and document findings on the multiple benefits of B. thonningii and thereby identify gaps and opportunities for further comprehensive studies. A systematic and manual search was conducted to retrieve relevant articles published from 1974 to June 2021. Electronic databases of PubMed (Medline), Google Scholar, and grey literature were employed to access the studies. Accordingly, 100 articles and 2 thesis papers were finally included in this study. The study shows B. thonningii tree species improve soil fertility and its abundant litter accumulated from the leaves of B. thonningii trees contributed to increased organic carbon and total nitrogen content. The plant parts are used in several traditional medicine to treat different human and animal ailments. The pods and seeds of the plant contained a lot of important nutrients and nutritional value, beneficial to human as well as animal health. The plant plays a key role in biomass production and carbon sequestration potential. Owing to its multiple benefits, there is an urgent need to facilitate the scaling-up of the use of the tree by using various approaches. The findings will serve as a useful reference for further in depth investigations on the multifunctional uses of the plant across different ecozone as well as supporting the scale up of the benefits of the species.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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