Introduction

Abstract

Agroforestry is an age-old land use system as the process of human evolution has been from forests when man learnt the art of domesticating plants and animals after leaving the hunting and gathering habit. The hunting and food gathering system gradually gave way to food producing systems. Incidentally, some stray references related to tree plantations occur in different texts of the Vedic literature. Archeological excavations corroborate early tree domestication around the settlements in South Asia. In India, organized research in agroforestry was initiated in early 1970s through industry participation in plantation of commercial tree species through Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) institutes. As follow up, the All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on Agroforestry was established in 1983 by the ICAR through which research work was carried out through Agricultural Universities situated in different agroclimatic zones. Forest Survey of India has reported that about 25 million ha area in the country (8.2 % of the total reported geographical area) is under agroforestry in both irrigated and rainfed agriculture which also includes trees outside forests and scattered trees on and off the agricultural fields. In this publication, the various chapters are compiled in such a way that a clear picture of various agroforestry systems both traditional and improved found in different agroecological regions is presented. Some systems are present across a number of climatic regions (for example salt-affected and waterlogged areas); but the problems are of different nature in different regions. To deal with such cases, separate chapters are included to present agroforestry approaches dealing with specific problems. Agroforestry systems provide excellent opportunities for carbon sequestration and mitigating climate change, hence it needs a special strategy in policy initiatives.