Vol. 7, Issue 4 (2018)

Author(s):
Manish Kumar Singh, Mohd. Ibrahim, Satyam Bordoloi, Dinesh Meena and Samiran Kakoti

Abstract:
An extensive field study was carried out during 2017-18, to explore Bamboo diversity and their utility in different forest fringe villages of Manipur. The fringe villages were selected at random from different districts of Manipur based on maximum availabiltiy & literature survey. For documenting utility of different bamboo species, the “transect walk” method of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) were adopted. The result indicated that, bamboo grow luxuriantly from hills to valleys of Manipur and form an important component of rural landscape. In total 16 bamboo species were documented from 19 forest fringe villages, which in turn situated in 5 different Districts of Manipur. The Use-value data indicate that there is a high degree of consensus among informants regarding utility of bamboos. A survey on the use of bamboo revealed that, availability of bamboo in fringe villages mainly depends on its utility to the natives. Besides that, impact of altitudinal variation on species availability has also been noticed clearly in the study areas. The most commonly grown and used species of bamboo in forest fringe villages were Bambusa nutans, B. tulda, Schizostachyum pergracile, Dendocalamus hamiltonii, Melocanna bambusoides and Thyrsostachys oliveri.