Doum palm population in natural landscape at Pouri.

Doum palm (Hyphaene thebaica), native to the semi-arid Sahelian zone of West Africa is a multipurpose tree species growing wild throughout the dry regions of tropical Africa, the Middle East and Western India. In the frame of my former project which aimed at assessing the socioeconomic importance of the doum palm species, local people revealed the amount of usefulness the species has been cited for and its capacity to set and successfully grow on a variety of soils. The species is then highly recommended for restoration of degraded areas and reforestation programmes as findings revealed relatively low densities in its distributional area. In addition, local people mentioned that over exploitation in some areas and the land burning for agricultural practices and rodents hunting lead to disappearance of the species in some areas. Thus, there is an urgent need to use strong techniques such as machine learning algorithm to investigate the capacity of the species for domestication and bring out suitable areas for the species cultivation across Benin.

The objectives of the project are to:

(i) map the geographic distribution of the doum palm across landscapes in Benin,

(ii) assess the suitable areas for the species domestication

(iii) identify together with land use managers, local NGOs and natural resources management institutions, local decision makers, local associations the areas available for the species cultivation. From our field observation, it comes that some of the previously proposed areas to host the transplanted individuals of the species have not been successful. As such this work is timely and very complementary to the currently ongoing activities.

The project will also help to improve the already existing strategies of ecosystems restoration based on locally adapted species. At the end, outputs will be shared with land use managers, local NGOs and natural resources management institutions, local decision makers, local associations.