Domestication, Conservation, and Livelihoods: A Case Study of Piper peepuloides Roxb.—An Important Nontimber Forest Product in South Meghalaya, Northeast India

Wild pepper (Piper peepuloides Roxb., family: Piperaceae) is an evergreen climber which grows wild in tropical evergreen forests and subtropical evergreen forests of northeast India. This plant grows luxuriantly in the areas with high rainfall at lower elevations ranging from 100 to 800？m above mean sea level. In Meghalaya, to meet the market demand, farmers have domesticated it in arecanut agroforests and betel leaf agroforests. We found that the mean density of wild pepper in arecanut agroforest is 585 stem/ha and only 85 stem/ha in natural forest. In India, wild pepper is used in a variety of Ayurvedic medicines. Local people of Meghalaya uses powdered dry seeds mixed with honey and egg yolk for the treatment of severe cough. The study reveals that the average gross annual production of wild pepper is 7？quintals/ha, and final market price fetches Rs. 336,000/ha, out of which 42% of the money goes to the grower, 16% to local trader, 23% to dealer, 17% to retailer, 1.2% to wages of labourers, and 0.6% to transport. 1. Introduction People in the rural areas across the world extract a wide variety of nontimber forest products (NTFPs), from nearby forests. NTFPs are important to rural households in terms of their contribution to health, food, energy, and other aspects of rural welfare [1]. In India, an estimated 50 million people living in and around forests rely upon NTFPs for their subsistence and cash income [2]. Bahuguna [3] and Mahapatra et al. [4] have studied at the contribution of NTFPs to cash income; however, such studies are very few, and our understanding of the subject remains inadequate. During recent years, forest managers have begun to consider the role of NTFPs in rural welfare, and in some cases, they have begun to manage forests in a way that promotes outputs other than timber [5, 6]. What is less understood and represented in policy is the contribution of these extracted products to a household’s cash income [4]. When rural households use most of their agricultural output for subsistence consumption, cash from the sale of NTFPs can play an important role by allowing the households to use the same for vital cash-dependent transactions, namely, buying tools and paying for school [1]. It has been assumed that the extraction of NTFPs from natural forests could serve as the goals of biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation [7, 8]. It is estimated that roughly 80% of the developing world including nearly 60 million indigenous people depend on wild fruits, seeds, poles for construction, and medicinal plants to meet subsistence and