Bananas and Food Security - Bioversity International

638 Les productions bananières / Bananas and food security – Session 4
questions liées au processus d’installation, à l’intensification, et à la baisse de fertilité. Plusieurs
articles soulignent les bonnes possibilités d’amélioration de la performance de la
culture du bananier ou du bananier plantain dans de tels systèmes de culture. Cependant,
la plupart des études ne fournissent pas de données quantitatives concernant le transfert
de fertilité à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur du système de culture. Ceci est quelque peu surprenant
car les flux de nutriments ont une importance fondamentale pour la caractérisation
de la dynamique de tels systèmes et de leur durabilité. Une telle caractérisation se révèle
importante pour la modélisation, compte tenu de la forte exigence en eau et en éléments
nutritifs des bananiers et des bananiers plantain.
Abstract
Bananas and plantains are very high water and nutrient demanding crops. They are
cultivated in various cropping systems as well as climate and soil conditions. At a very
high level of discrimination, two categories may be distinguished: high-input and
traditional cropping systems.
The high-input systems have long received high research inputs aiming at increasing crop
performance and focusing mainly on the use of high yielding cultivars, the adaptation of
management practices to site specific constraints, pest and disease control.
Considering the traditional cropping systems in one category with low inputs is
misleading as it hinders recognition of a wide diversity: bananas and plantains can be
cultivated in pure stands or associated with other crops of various type (tree, tuber,
legumes, etc.). In the latter case, they may not always be the main crop.
A first step in the understanding of such cropping systems concerns the description of
their typology. Literature data indeed provide such information related to case studies.
Typological determiners involve mostly socioeconomic, spatioeconomic and spatiotemporal
criteria as well as ecological parameters, management practices, and to a lesser
extent, soil fertility aspects.
Typological studies are carried out mostly by using methodologies similar to that of
diagnostic survey (“enquête diagnostic”). They are generally conducted to answer
questions related to the settling process, intensification, and fertility depletion. Several
papers stress the good possibilities of improving the crop performance of banana or
plantain in such cropping systems. However, most studies lack in providing quantitative
data involving the transfer of fertility within the cropping system and outside of it. This is
somewhat surprising because nutrient fluxes are of key importance to characterise the
dynamics of such systems and their sustainability. Such a characterisation appears to be
important for modelling purposes in view of the high water and nutrient demand of
bananas and plantains.
Introduction
Several reports have documented the systems of banana cultivation and management
(Jaramillo 1987, Samson 1980, Stover and Simmonds 1987, Wilson 1987, Price 1995a,
Robinson 1995, Davies 1995). From these reports, a general consensus appears in that a