PLANT SPECIES DIVERSITY OF HOMESTEAD MICROSITES OF GAZIPUR DISTRICT OF BANGLADESH

Abstract

The study was carried out to study the plant species diversity in homestead microsites in two upazillas of gazipur district of Bangladesh during the period from February to July 2016. Two Upazillas were selected identically and one union was selected from each upazilla and two villages were selected randomly from each union. The selected four villages were Ashapur and Benupur (Kaliakoir upazila), Maona and Lakshumpur (Sreepur upazila) for data collection. Homeyard, frontyard, backyard, approach road and boundary were considered as microsites of homestead. A total of 40 homesteads (10 from each village) were interviewed by using a pretested

questionnaire to collect the necessary information. Respondents were classified into 4 different farm categories i.e, landless, small, medium and large. Data on different microsites of homestead as tree resources, their distribution, management level and constraints across the production units were collected and analyzed. Results revealed that most of the respondents were middle aged (52.50%) having primary education (40%) with agriculture as their occupation (50%). Boundary was identified as the most developed segment of the microsites. In homeyard, papaya was the most prevalent species (3.06). In frontyard and approach road, betelnut (4.26) and coconut (3.20) respectively were the most prevalent species. In backyard and boundary, mango (3.90 and 5.30 respectively) was the most prevalent species. Among the microsites, an average of 15.48, 26.73, 30.95, 12.14 and 33.60 trees per farm was recorded at homeyard, frontyard, backyard, approach road and boundary, respectively. The average tree composition consisting of fruit, timber and medicinal plants were 55.70, 39.51 and 4.78, respectively. The tree diversity index varied among different microsites where the highest value was obtained in the homeyard (2.285) and the lowest was in frontyard (1.886). Equitability was the highest in homeyard (0.78), followed by backyard (0.72), boundary (0.70), approach road (0.66) and frontyard (0.62).