Lukango Tree Conservancy (LuTreeCo)’s Post

🍯Kenya is the third important producer of honey in #Africa after Ethiopia and Tanzania. 🍯The apiculture policy has broadly promoted a modern bee keeping industry to provide additional income for rural households 👇🏽The interventions to address apiculture problems to achieve honey production potential and the production of other hive products: 🐝 Multiplication and genetic resource conservation of the honey bees, 🐝Organizing enhanced community marketing associations, 🐝Enhancing honey and other hive product #sustainability, 🐝Conducting awareness campaigns among stakeholders regarding bee keeping opportunities and, 🐝Making #Beekeeping an important part of curriculum in primary and secondary #education. #apiculture #agroforestry #biodiversity #gpi2050

#TreeOfTheDay 🌳: ATLAS PISTACHIO The Atlas pistachio tree, called “battoum” or “botma” in Arabic, is a majestic tree. Pistacia atlantica Desf, its botanical name, occupies a very vast area encompassing Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Iran and Afghanistan. It is an imposing tree acclimatized to the arid and Saharan climate of the region, resistant to extreme conditions (steppe and arid), being able to reach 25 m in height and live more than 1400 years. The Atlas pistachio tree has ecological, economic and medicinal importance: - It withstands strong winds, long periods of steppe drought, sand encroachment. With its pivoting root system and its hardiness, it is the most appropriate tree in the fight against desertification, soil protection and the fixation of dunes as a windbreak. - It strengthens the soil and is used for reforestation of arid and steep slopes and against landslides. - It is a source of fodder for livestock. - It also has the advantage of being a good rootstock and a good pollinator for pistacia vera (the cultivated edible pistachio tree). - The bark produces mastic resin (viscous rosin) used for medical purposes. - The fruits are drupes very rich in oil very energetic and very popular with the population. - The leaves of the pistachio tree of the atlas give a phenolic extract which presents a considerable antifungal activity and which finds its uses in the pharmacological field. It is therefore a tree that is both protective and productive. The hardiness of this tree makes it particularly interesting and very useful in reforestation programs in arid and semi-arid areas. The Atlas pistachio tree to its protector. It often grows inside a Zizyphus Lotus (wild jujube tree) which protects the young shoots of the pistachio tree against the tooth of the livestock, promotes the germination of its seeds and provides it with a soil rich in organic matter. It is a pattern of nature that must be taken into account when planting the pistachio tree. #poweroftree #sustainableworld #agroforestry

RT: Botany.one How to protect native plants and other stories - Alun Salt Here’s a catch-up of the stories we shared on social media channels recently. https://lnkd.in/dkT5EY7J #biodiversity #protection #conservation #genebank #seeds #plantbreeding #genomics #FoodSecurity #climatechange #onehealth #biotechnology #genomics

Bees and Hemp 🐝 🌱 💚 🌱 🐝 What do bees really love about hemp? After the legalization of Hemp in the US after the 2018 Farm Bill, it is important for us to understand how the cultivation of the hemp plant can affect bees. So far, research done shows the relationship between bees and hemp is nothing less than a beautiful love story. One study cites: “Being wind pollinated, hemp plants produce no nectar but large amounts of pollen that are attractive to bees. This time period coincides with a dearth of pollinator-friendly crop plants in the region, making hemp flowers a potentially valuable source of pollen for foraging bees.” Another study, published in the Environmental Entomology journal, determined a solid correlation between higher hemp plants and the abundance and diversity of bees visiting them. Plants at least two meters tall drawn almost 17 times the number of bees than their shorter counterparts. From the northeastern United States alone, hemp might provide a food source for 16 distinct selections of bee species! “As cultivation of hemp increases, growers, land managers, and policymakers should consider its value in supporting bee communities and take its attractiveness to bees into account when developing pest management strategies,” state the study’s authors.