Kampala — The benefits of fruits have been known for a long time. They supplement staple foods and improve their nutritional quality while at the same time they provide rural people with income and employment.

Income from fruits is sustainable and predictable unlike that from annual crops such as cotton or maize. Some fruit trees yield twice a year. Fruit trees can also be grown with other food crops and near homesteads.

A joint effort by the Uganda Agroforestry Development Network (UGADEN) NAADS and ICRAF among other players, now intend to use fruit trees as a weapon against poverty.

They expect millions of Uganda's poor in the rural areas to be their allies by planting many trees. Some 80 percent of Ugandans who live in the rural areas add up to 19 million people.

A survey done by World Forestry Centre, ICRAF recently showed that 52.6 of households in Uganda had not planted any trees during the previous 12 months. This was mainly due to the limited access to quality planting material. Most households reported that they had no tree seedlings to plant. The report also reveals that 10 percent of formerly arable land had been degraded due to overcultivation and that abandoned land is increasing at the rate of 3 percent every year.

It was found out that only a small number of farmers have access to agroforesty technologies and information. The experts are saying that as the population pressure increases and farm sizes shrink due to land subdivision, more farmers will turn to planting horticultural crops and fruit trees.

The experts say that fruit tree planting holds a huge potential given that there are currently over 1,000 species of fruit trees in the Tropics that are still in the wild.

These, they say, can be domesticated and turned into products. Some fruit trees from the wild have already been used to produce high value products. The shea nut tree produces butter which is a major ingredient in high quality cosmetics and foods, and the Amarula is a major ingredient in high quality drinks.

Some people at the Uganda Fruit Development Strategy workshop in February agreed on promoting fruit production in small holder farms, provision of quality germplasm, producing rootstocks from seed, clonal rootstocks and through tissue cultures.

They also mooted the idea of maintaining modern fruit tree nurseries.

A five-fruit tree policy per household was suggested.